Coober Pedy

What an amazing day we had today!! If you want the short version then we had a good look around Coober Pedy. Visited some underground shops, some underground Churches, an underground house and then fininshed the day at The Breakaways. What stunning scenery.

Now if you want the extended version read on:

What a different place Coober Pedy is. If you do not like dust (Betty), this is the place for you to avoid. It is very dry and dusty with an average of 5 inches of rain per year.



We had a walk down the main street where the kids tried some ‘Noodling’, that is looking for opals in a pile of rocks. The good news is that they had fun trying, the bad news is that they did not find any! We are still on our three month caravanning holiday and did not find our fortune here.








We then went underground into old mines where there are shops and art galleries that sold local opals and artefacts. Josh bought a boomerang and a didgeridoo. We know he bought this because we heard him playing it at every chance he had for the rest of the day.



It was amazing going underground, walking into the side of the hills and seeing how the locals lived in this climate. We were told that over 80% of the population live under the ground and the other 20% are too scared to. We spoke to a local who was currently digging his own ‘dugout’ in an old mine about 4 kilometres from the town centre. He had come to Coober Pedy ten years ago to visit his brother and never left, his brother did!


We went and had a look at a couple of underground churches that allowed people to enter but just asked that you turn off the lights as you left. It would be an amazing experience to sit through a church service under the ground, but as today is Thursday we missed out on that, Josh gave us a sermon anyway!


We then made a visit to Faye’s house. This place was really quite interesting as it is a house where people live today. It had been dugout by three women over a period of many years growing from one room to at least six rooms. They did not use any of the modern equipment and so had completed it by hand. It had a couple of bedrooms, a bar, a swimming pool and the lounge and kitchen. It would be an interesting place to stay for a few days and experience living under the ground.











Driving down the road we saw the dingo fence, a fence that extends for over 2,250 kilometres to keep the dingoes away from the livestock, quite a feat to see the fence and walk a long one small section of it.






We then went for a drive to the Breakaways. A desolate but beautiful area about 30 kilometres out of Coober Pedy, the site of a few movies including Mad Max and others. Pictures really do not do this place justice but I have put in a couple anyway. It is a place bests visited at sunrise or sunset as the earth changes colour and reflects the sun. It is very much about the colours of the ground and rocks that rise above the ground in the middle of no-where.






We have a big day on the road tomorrow as we enter the Northern Territory and head for Kings Canyon and Uluru, we travel stage one to Erldunda where we will spend the night.