The drive was very uneventful but we did see a fair bit of water along the way.....Lake Torrens & Island Lagoon.
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| Island Lagoon |
It is not a place I would take children to, as the only exciting thing is the pool at the caravan park :-)
We did the "Oasis Tour" and our tour guide 'Rudy' was quite a character. We learnt about all of his marriages, he showed us all 4 churches (all underground, and we toured the Serbian Orthodox Church) we went for a drive past all of his friends homes, he showed us the 2 supermarkets, the opal fields where visitors can look for opals safely without having to stake a claim, we did the opal mine tour and he showed us the Westpac Bank and "this is our Westpac Bank ATM!!!" He showed us the ATM 3 times, but he was a real town treasure, 78 and driving the tour bus :-) We saw the Golf Club......they mix oil with the sand to use on the greens so they don't blow away! :-)
These are all a part of the Serbian Orthodox church. They are planting a mass of fruit trees with underground irrigation systems and this seems to be working quite well :-)
The Coober Pedy Golf Club.......yes, it's an 18 hole-er!!! ;-)
Our tour guide Rudy in an underground house, they sound amazing as they use very little energy and stay at a constant 24 degrees all year. Which would be great as the temperature gets up to around 48 in the shade. The others are of an old opal mine.
Coober Pedy's only radio station which plays everything from Ac/Dc to "my old man's a dustman" it was pretty cool ;-)
The following pics are of Coober Pedy through my eyes. It was difficult and uninspiring, but I'm so glad I went. The whole place is a contradiction, looks and feels like you're on Mars, has very little bird life, the only grass is in the school ground, they only have a primary school, and the people are absolute characters with lots of great stories to tell :-)
It never rains there, but they have plenty of water underground that according to the locals is "the best water in Australia" it costs 20c per 30 litres and is pretty good :-) It's freezing at night at this time of year, the wind cuts right through you during the day, but we were lucky with our visit. It was a beautiful sunny calm day.
We left Coober Pedy early the next morning with the aim of at least reaching Erldunda, the turnoff to Uluru and Yulara. We had very strong headwinds and had to brake hard so we didn't hit a dingo that was wandering on the road. Our first sighting of a Dingo!!! We saw a few Emu along the way, and masses of Wedgetail Eagles. One even landed at the side of the road beside us....that was pretty exciting!!!
There was a burnt out car about every 5km's for the next couple of hundred km's. I figured they're all stolen from Coober Pedy and get as far as the fuel tank will allow. There was a bit of humour in it all tho.....but if you ever break down around that area you can say good-bye to your car!!!
We got to the Northern Territory around 1.30 and took a couple of pics. When we stepped out of the car we were inundated with flies. There hadn't been a sign of them before that. They are thick in the air up here.
We stopped about 5 minutes up the road for a quick lunch and then off we went again. We re-fueled at a roadhouse called Kulgera about 70km's south of Erldunda where fuel was now $2.05 per litre, bumped into our neighbours from the Coober Pedy Caravan Park and checked out the cool tree......there was no information on it, but I liked it anyway :-)
We got to Erldunda around 3.30 and decided to keep going until around 4. We found the perfect little spot on the side of the road. It was out of the wind, flat ground and plenty of fire wood.
There was very little traffic after dark and tomorrow we'll finally get to Uluru :-)
See you then ;-)
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