Port Augusta to Coober Pedy

DAY 4 – PORT AUGUSTA TO COOBER PEDY

Left Port August early this morning.  Not a great deal to recommend it!!  Off to meet the Parsons family in Woomera.  Emus were abundant along the highway which made the kids’ day!  So great to see animals in their natural habitat.  Even a Wedged-Tail Eagle having a breakfast of some roadkill, refused to budge as our Prado and caravan thundered by!

Woomera was not far off the highway at all and has had a checkered history with US bases, rocket test range and immigration detention.  The Museum was interesting, although you can imagine our seven children seeing the photographs of the young people protesting the US bases at Nurrungar in the 1970s, with naked bottoms displayed to the world.  There was much tittering !!!  The kids found the film about the bombing of Brittain in WWII very interesting as it sparked the start of the research into rocket design.

After a few moments of Rob and David comparing vans and Pauline and I discussing caravan waving etiquette (and lunch being over) we both headed off – the Parsons to Lake Eyre and the Hansens to Coober Pedy!!

Again, I just have so few words to describe the vastness of the land we are experiencing.  And we aren’t yet really in the middle of nowhere!  The immense distances we are travelling see dwarfed by the infinite horizon which just always seems out of reach.  Each part of the day seems slightly different in the way the sunlight reflects off the land.  The landscape seemed to change today from very rocky to very red sand.

The fascinating thing upon entry to Coober Pedy this afternoon was the fact that there is no one big company mining for opals here.  Rather, there seems to be hundreds (in fact at last count, more than 250,000 mine shaft entrances with each  prospector allowed a 15 square metre claim.  With a population of only 2000 people it was much smaller than I had imagined.  And no water to the vans in the caravan park – a new thing for me – so all water has to be carried to the van or dishes etc have to be washed in the camp kitchen.  Yes, all you smarties who are telling me this is how 80% of the world’s population lives!!  I know that!  And it isn’t fun.  Really makes you think about how many times you run the tap when you are cooking dinner and how you really take that convenience for granted.

For those Trivia buffs among you, Coober Pedy has been the scene of filming for Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and The Amazing Race.  It was also the scene of the filmclip for INXS’s “Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)”.

Tomorrow is our first day without driving and I must admit we are looking forward to it.  Intend to celebrate with a sleep in and bacon and egg muffins!!  We will wander around the town and see what mischief we can get up to!