February 1 – Rain in Coober Pedy and the Flight back to Adelaide

In the middle of the night we heard a massive explosion…likely lightning, but perhaps mining related…because we woke up to a cold morning and massive amounts of water everywhere.  We were told it only rains about one or two days a year in Coober Pedy…so it rained for us.  And this rainstorm was huge.

Love small towns…when it was time to go to the airport our “transfer service” was a couple of guys who worked at the hotel.  Once we got to the airport they unlocked the door, turned on the lights, checked us onto the flight, managed luggage handling, waved the plane in, checked tickets as we exited to board the plane, and generally “did it all”.

The Coober Pedy airport was deserted when we arrived.  There were eventually 15 passengers on our flight to Adelaide.  Note the round “window” in the floor in the middle of the terminal…that is an old opal mine (with a glass top so you can see into it).

Flying out of Coober Pedy we could see huge water puddles along the runway and once we took off, we could see red rivers everywhere. 

We were back in Adelaide by late afternoon, picked up our car and had no problems getting to the hotel…getting into the parking garage was a bit of a squeeze.  While Paul seems to have mastered driving on the left-hand side of the road some of the parking situations are a bit tight.  

Later we took a short walk to find a place for dinner.  Had Japanese.  There were lots of restaurants along the street.