Newsomes' Dash: 25 Apr 10

By Craig: Arriving in Coober Pedy not really knowing what to expect, my first impression was ‘Oh! My God!’

However the place grows on you. We stayed at a place called Riba’s Underground Caravan Park recommended to us by fellow travellers I had meet whilst having the HF radio fitted (Jan & Peter). Riba’s is a great spot, a little way out of town, with an underground tour of the old Opal mine as a part of your first night fee. The camp kitchen and hot showers were just what we needed for a few days as we set ourselves up for our trip into the desert.

Of course there was a little trouble with leaking water tanks but I was looking forward to the next week in the Great Victorian Desert and water was essential, so I found myself under the trailer!

Whilst experiencing the local area we visited the lookout which offered an overall view of Coober Pedy however a visit to an underground Siberian church and an old opal mine provided the real Coober Pedy.

By Lou: After the beauty of the Oodnadatta Track and the Painted Desert the road into Coober Pedy was pretty lack lustre.

An exception would be the curious sign saying ‘Lollipop Lane’. “What a stupid name for a main road with a plain vista”, I said to Craig. But then we noticed some ball shaped trees and I got it. For just a kilometre or so it was like someone had poked lollipops randomly into the earth. Curious for its oddity (sorry, we can’t find the photos of it).

I was looking forward to Coober Pedy because of the extreme reactions I had heard over the years. People seem to either love it or hate it. After our 4 days there I have fallen into the ‘love it’ category. Not that I could live there mind you. But what I loved is that the hot, barren and stony façade stood in stark contrast to the lives people had forged underground. It’s a rabbit warren of a place and a home extension seems to just involve digging a little bit more dirt out.

You can often guess the size of a home by joining the dots made by the exhaust pipes jutting out of the ground.

Like Lightning Ridge, many people are afflicted with opal fever and work long hours mining for the chance of finding the big one.

Craig spent most of his time trying to repair water tanks again. Each tank under the trailer holds 70 litres and will be vital for our trek out into the desert. The poor love didn’t have a lot of room to move but soldiered on. Meanwhile Sam and I cracked the schoolbooks.

We appreciated the craftsmanship of the Siberian church, and enjoyed a tour of a mine museum which included demonstrations of mining apparatus as well as an actual underground home as it would have looked in the 70s.