Woomer - Coober Pedy

It was a reasonably early start today as we wanted to get through to Coober Pedy by mid afternoon without having to rush the drive. Before we left we spoke to our next door neighbour from the night before who had had two flat tyres the day before and had to go to Roxby Downs to get them fixed before they could continue their journey. I am glad this did not happen to us.

After travelling through a fair bit of fog, we stopped at Glendambo for morning tea and fuel, the most expensive so far at $1.82 per litre.

We had the thrill of seeing a few emus’ on the side of the road, a couple of young birds included. We had a bigger highlight later seeing four eagles on the side of the road having a meal on some road kill, a dead kangaroo. While three flew away just after we stopped, one stayed around a little longer so we were able to have a closer look at this big bird.


The country side is now very much the outback, with few trees and very little shrub over the ground. It was amazing to compare the countryside that we had travelled through over the last couple of days and how it had changed.






We stopped for lunch at a rest stop near Ingomar, where we had a great view of the surrounding area and saw how barren the country area is. We seemed to be literally in the middle of nowhere. A problem with these sites is the lack of toilets and so there was plenty of toilet paper lying around on the ground. It should be noted by anyone travelling this way that there are no toilets between Glendambo and Coober Pedy, over two and a half hours on the road.

Getting close to Coober Pedy., meant we started to see some of the mines, or the result of some of the mining that had happened in the area. There are dirt mounds everywhere that had been dug up in search of that illusive opal.

Not long after arriving at the caravan park, we started to see some familiar faces, including one young boy of Dutch decent who spoke little if any english. Chels and Josh had played footy with him the night before at Woomera and today it was tiggy around the playground. Although he spoke little english, it did not stop him from talking in his native tongue, often quite loudly, even though no-one else around had any idea what he was on about.

After a quick drive around town, it was back for a quiet night before we start exploring the area tomorrow.