CAPTIVATING COOBER PEDY

The Painted Desert - all natural!

The photos do not do justice to the colours here - once again - all nature's work.

Orthodox Croatian Chapel - all hand made/cut - absolutely amazing.

COLOUR!!!!!! This is how it looks to the lucky miner who finds a good strike.

Home Sweet Home!

Hi again folks, how is life treating you? We continue to be blessed with good fortune and great experiences. Our most recent adventure was Coober Pedy. For anyone out there who perhaps doesn’t realise, Coober Pedy is wholly and solely an Opal Mining Town (except, these days, for a huge tourism industry).
I cannot tell you it is unique, but to the best of my (very limited) knowledge, the structure of the town is like none other. I knew that most of the people lived underground there, but just could not picture how that would look. Now that I have seen it, I am finding it difficult to describe. The town itself is largely above ground – when I say town, I mean the few commercial enterprises that are strewn down the main street. Some of the commercial and most of the residential is under-ground. The residential area resembles nothing more than something like a gravel pit. Truly, the streets are mainly unpaved and just meander amongst large mounds of earth. Some of the mounds are man-made, but mostly they are a natural occurrence. In the front and to the sides of these mounds (often partially hidden) are door-ways. These are homes. The only other give-away that people live there are the manifold pipes sticking up out of the hills – these are air vents. Not in your wildest dreams could you call the place attractive, but it is absolutely fascinating. Coober Pedy is a melting pot of nationalities, I think I remember them telling me there were 60 different nations represented there. Many are represented by clubs which abound there. There is a very large police presence, although we were told by our erstwhile guide, that is simply because of the vast area/precinct covered by that particular police station. I think that perhaps also the place is, or has been, very lawless, much like the ‘wild, wild west’ often depicted in the movies. A couple of little antidotes that may illustrate this point were that firstly, policemen never live underground – the reason? Because it is too easy for miscreants to drop explosives (very readily available there) down their air-vents (the air vents on the homes silly, not on the policemen!) . Secondly, if anyone is caught trespassing in a tunnel that is not theirs, they are ‘bombed’ out of the tunnel! As I said, a pretty lawless place!
We felt that the best way to see such an unusual place was to take one of the professional tours – this we did and we were very impressed with both the quality and the value. The tour took 4 hours and covered pretty much everything. I have included photos taken on the tour. You will see the inside of a home, a church and an old mine. You will notice that the photo of the mine shows a line of ‘colour’ – this is what opal looks like while still in the ground. If you click on the photo and enlarge it, you should get a pretty good image. The tour took us out to some of the more heavily worked areas where you really wouldn’t want to go for a walk due to all the holes in the ground and the instability of the ground due to the manifest tunnelling. We also went out to the Painted Desert where it looks like man has been mining, but in actual fact it is all natures work. TBBITW took a great photo of the ‘dog fence’ – this runs for some amazing length and is designed to keep out dingos and wild dogs. The odd thing is that when I asked which side of the fence the dogs are on, I was told both sides – and yet they maintain this fence diligently!! Still haven’t worked that one out.
One of the lessons we are learning is not to listen to what other people tell you. Impressions are biased by personal taste and often completely different to our own. We had been told that Cooper Pedy was a problem town and that there was an ‘indigenous’ problem there. Well folks, there were a few inebriated types around on Friday afternoon, but by and large we found that the local indigenous population was doing what everyone else was doing, working and bringing up their families. There seem to be a small core of people in town who are ‘lost’, but that is all.
The caravan park we stayed at (Stuart Range) was very good indeed. Clean amenities, good bays and brilliant pizzas! Yes, I did say pizzas. It is a strange thing, but TBBITW does not like pizzas and as a result, I had not had one for almost 8 years. Yet, in Coober Pedy we broke the pizza drought. The family who own and manage the caravan park moved there from Melbourne some 40 years ago. In Melbourne (the Aussie home of pizza) they had a pizza parlour. They have continued that family tradition in CP – and I have to tell you, they do a great job.
In case you are wondering, TBBITW did break down and buy me a very pretty opal pendant. I confess to having a passion for opal, but am aware that there is a tourist trap there and there is absolutely no guarantee that what you are getting is either good or the real McCoy. Needless to say, despite all that, once confronted by a myriad of the beautiful gems, I was very, very keen to own one.
We only stayed in CP for two days, that pretty much covers the place, particularly having taken the tour. From Coober Pedy we travelled on to Uluru – exciting? Yes, but I will save it for the next blog.
Take care and don’t get moon-struck – Steph.