Coober Pedy

The next town after Woomera was Coober Pedy, 369 km away. We stayed two nights there, in order to get to Uluru in one day. It was nice to have a break from all the driving, and Coober Pedy was such an interesting place. It is the opal capital of the world, and if Canadians think Sudbury is a moonscape, they haven't seen this place! We went on a tour of the town the morning after we arrived, which included an opal mine, plus some of the 'buildings', most of which are entirely or partially underground. The name of the town is derived from the Aboriginal words "kupa peti", commonly assumed to mean "white man in a hole." The early settlers lived in dugouts to escape the summer heat, with the bonus that the homes were warm in the cooler winter months. These underground houses maintain a year-round temperature of about 22 celsius.



We had a look at a couple of churches, one of which is an old opal mine, plus an underground hotel and a house. They are very cave-like (obviously), but interesting. On this tour, we also went noodling for opal, which is just like fossicking, or looking on the ground or in discarded debris from mines. We found a few little pieces of opal with a few flecks of colour, but nothing valuable!

Serbian Church

















Roman Catholic Church
























There is also a golf course in Coober Pedy - oh, did I mention that there is no grass in this town? Well, the school playing field has grass, and two houses had some greenery in their yards, but the rest of the town was dust. Likewise the golf course. For each hole, there was a raised platform with some artificial turf for the tee off, the fairways were just beige sand, and the 'greens' were black, as they had been sprayed with tar to keep the sand from blowing away. They were still called greens though. And true to the Aussie sense of humour, there was a sign that read "Please keep off the grass"!














I really liked Coober Pedy, and after spending a day there, we began to see where there were more housing developments tucked into the hillsides. It was a very interesting place.





Sunrise, 11 July