Driving up the middle of Australia into the desert the shrub gets shorter and less dense while the roadkill seems to get bigger. I had never seen cows as roadkill before but now I've seen many. The further you go up you start to see remnants of cars that have been either destroyed in a roll over or simply left to be vandalized and stripped by whoever makes the effort to do so. Coober Pedy lies more or less half way to Alice from Adelaide ie) a long way from anywhere. Again quirky just doesn't seem to do it justice. It was established in the late 1800's when some young buck stumbled upon an opal seam. Now there are over 2.5 million holes in the area and although the population has dwindled, plenty of miners hoping to make it rich. Of every 100 holes that are dug, 99+ find no opal. About 1/10th of those that do find some, find some that is of any value, a 10th of those can make a living off of their find and only a 10th of those actually make it rich. To do an exploratory hole costs about $100. If something looks promising the hole has to be widened so someone can be lowered down to look and this costs about $500. If the miner decides to pursue this area then their initial outlay is about $3000 without any assurance that they will find any opal of value. Fools paradise! The area looks like it has been infested with monstrous ants as wherever you look mounds of dirt litter the landscape. As it is essentially in the middle of desert, greenspace is non-existent and the main road of the town is essentially bordered by cinder block businesses, hotels and restaurants (of which there are few). It's like a frontier town in one of those old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns - dusty with an undertone of struggle and strife. The aboriginals in the area are as black as black and very dishevelled (at least the ones you see wandering the town). They seem lost, idly sitting on sidewalks or lounging beside buildings near the centre of town. On the day we arrived there seemed to be a feud brewing and you could hear shouting and witness some poor emaciated Abo being kicked and beaten in the street. Later, as we were going to dinner, we could hear a scuffle again and then witnessed rocks being pelted (..our way) at some poor fellow sprinting away in a cower. Sounds like a dreadful place but aside from these episodes we actually enjoyed it for a couple of days as there was plenty of interesting things to see and do.
We stayed at a hotel called the Desert Cave in which you actually stay underground in a holed-out sandstone cave - much like about 50 % of the towns people. We arrived on a public holiday so had to make the best of it finding interesting things for the kids to do. For a start we hit the Old Timers Mine, where you could take a tour underground and get a bit of a history of mining for opal in the area. The kids were stoked as they got to wear hard hats and check out a number of tunnels and displays 20-30 ft under the earth. They had a small sandbox outside filled with rocks with tiny shards of opal and fossils so the kids were able to do some 'noodling' and find some treasures. From there we found the Big Winch - one of those big things in Australia which some towns flaunt as tourist traps - not particularly exciting really - so we moved on to Josephines Art Gallery and Kangaroo Orphanage - what the two have in common is anyone's guess. As we walked in, there were a bunch of Didgeridoos on display for sale and conversation with the proprietor led to her espousing her husband's capability at teaching people how to play these long cylindrical instruments. Naturally we were intrigued and before you could say lickety-splitz the kids were all having a lesson while I sauntered around the shop checking out the artwork. Jo gave me a quick lesson on Aboriginal Art and pointed out some of the typical themes in some of the paintings. We were a bit early for the kangaroo feeds so had a wander nearby to a couple other opal shops owned by haggard-old grumpy Germans who seemed to be miffed if you were only browsing in their shop and not laying down hard currency or plastic. The lights would go out before we'd left the building kind of thing. We headed back to the Kangaroo Orphanage just as a busload of tourists had arrived and saw some of the smallest and cutest red kangaroos you could imagine. At the end, the kids and Jen got to cradle these small pups and because we were enamored by it all - bought a Didgeridoo for the kids to have a go at - might give them an interesting show and tell next year at school.
On day 2 of the Coober we ventured to the Catacomb Church - an underground church excavated into the sandstone and then did some further noodling in the public noodling area - again a bit of a fool's paradise as the chances of finding anything remotely resembling opal and of value is probably well less than zero. Once sufficiently dusty we aimed our sights at trying to find a place to scrub up one of the small stones we'd noodled the day before at the Old Timers Noodling area and organize an afternoon activity. After a few strikes we found a fellow who would shine up our precious find but couldn't do so until later in the day so we headed out to Tom's Working Mine on the outskirts of town for a family tour. The tour was run by this old Scot who'd smoked his lungs to death and was huffing and puffing like a steam engine throughout the whole tour. Again the kids had a blast as they were allowed to be winched up one of the small holes that miners used to descend in order to enter the mines, play with divining rods (which only I seemed to have the power to make work) and attack some sandstone with a hand-held jack-hammer. At one point we were 52 feet below the earth! For dinner we hit a local Greek restaurant and then trekked out to the Breakaways - a rock formation about 30 kms from town along some windy dirt roads better suited to rally racing than racing the setting sun for a few pics. On more than one occasion deep curves came up suddenly in the road without warning and as we were nearing the rocks the sun shone directly into my view as I was driving, blinding me from anything in front on the road. Fortunately we stayed on course and enjoyed the lookouts over these majestically coloured formations. All tolled, we found Coober Pedy a friendly enough place to visit with some very down to earth (literally and figuratively) people but am glad I decided not to take on the job here for a week - may have been mayhem in the emergency! Off to Uluru, King's Canyon and Alice next - looking forward to gazing at the big rock!
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