January 30 – Coober Pedy – Opals and Underground Living

Today we flew to Coober Pedy, Opal Capital of the World and a really hot place to live and visit.  Apparently we are visiting at the hottest time of the year.  It wasn’t unbearable but it was pretty hot. 

We are staying in one of the underground hotels here in Coober Pedy.  Because of the extreme heat (often 110°F)  nearly 70% of the people live in underground homes, mostly dug into the side of hills, called dugouts.  And many of the business and hotels and such are underground as well.  One underground the temperatures stay around 73°F year-round.  Very comfortable, No air conditioning required.    The room walls and ceilings look beautiful with the raw sandstone.

After checking in to the hotel and a very quick lunch (a muffin) we were met by Jimmy, our guide and local character.  He has lived in the area for over 50 years and seems to have been involved in everything.  He is taking us on a town tour.  And it turns out there are a lot of eclectic things to see in CP.

First stop was the St. Elijah’s Serbian Church, and underground church with an adjacent underground house for the visiting priest and an underground parish all.  

We only visited the church but it was really beautiful.  The vaulted ceiling was multi-levels and was formed by the boring machines that they use to bore out mine tunnels.

Some of the statuary was carved right into the stone walls.  This one is of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist.

We also drove by the sign to the new cemetery, called Boot Hill.

We also took a quick drive through the CP golf course.  It is 18 holes, par-72 and has no grass.  Players use a small piece of artificial turf to tee off and the greens have no grass.  They are black, oled down, raked sand (Golfers get to keep any opals they find).

An interesting factoid:  In its 600-year history, St. Andrews (the famous golf course in Scotland) has granted reciprocal playing rights to only one golf course in the entire world, the one in Coober Pedy. 

We also saw the dingo fence (also called the vermin fence).  The fence was built in the 1990’s to keep dingoes away from sheep.  It is 3488 miles long and is still maintained.  It’s one of the longest structures in the world.  According to Jimmy dingoes are “killing machines” that would go on rampages killing as many sheep as they could…eating only a small part of their kill.  So, on one side of the fence are sheep and cattle and on the other side is only cattle.  The cattle are generally too big for the dingoes to kill. 

They have installed dingo grids or guards where the roads go through the fence.  They are similar to cattle guards but much wider with the grates spaced much farther apart.

On our drive we saw many scattered rains showers in the distance.

Then we pulled into an area of opal fields where it looked like thousands of giant gophers were digging up the place…there are piles of rocks and sand everywhere.  

Opals are mined on relatively small claims…no open pit mines or massive underground mines.  Claims are limited to a 50 by 100 meter rectangle, and there are over 250,000 mine shafts in the area.  Shafts are drilled vertically.  If they hit some opal, then they will dig horizontally.

This photo shows the entrance to a mine that is lined with metal.  

The drive also took us to an area called the Kanku-Breakaways, a conservation park that is of significance to the Antakirinja Matuntjara Yankunytjjatjara and other aboriginal people.   

Besides just beautiful vistas and mountain ranges…

there were some interesting formations including the Salt and Pepper Hills,

the Sphinx

and the Sleeping Camel.

Some of the areas we drove through were almost featureless…flat as a pancake.

There was a small area that was covered with gypsum (mica) that sparkled when the sun hit the shards just right.  Very magical and hard to photograph.

We also spent time in what started out as a three-bedroom dugout home.  However, they kept finding opals so they kept drilling and the number of rooms eventually grew to over 20.  It is now a museum.  Some of it goes through the mining tunnels, complete with manikin miners.

And we got to see some of the opals still embedded in the walls of the cave.

Some of the rooms were set up like homes so you could see what the dugout homes look like.  Other than having no windows they are like pretty much any other home. 

And one room was set up as an early miners simple home.

When we got back to our room we discovered one of the down sides to living in a cave.  We found small bits of dust and rock scattered around the room and on the furniture and bedding.  While they "seal" the stone with lacquer it is not completely effective. The rock ceilings and/or walls continually shed small bits of dust and rock.  All part of the experience.   

January 31 – Almost made it to the Painted Desert

We headed out first thing in the morning for an all day tour to the Painted Desert.  We got about 2 hours into the trip (on gravel/sand roads) and ran into wet driving conditions.  The area had been hit with a major shower the day before.  Our guide said it was unlikely that we would be able to make it across the creeks because even if they weren’t filled with water they would be too wet to make it through.  And it was obvious he was struggling with the wet conditions, even with the 4-wheel drive.  So we turned around and came back. 

But it was a pretty awesome drive anyway.  The vistas were endless…

  

And the road seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. 

The surface was very crispy and we left footprints as we walked across the area.

The creeks were very dry in the area we were in. 

We had stops along the way at a mica (gypsum) deposit.  Talk about sparkley.  It was hard to do the mica justice when it was laying on the ground…

but held up to the sun it was pretty magical.

And “moon rock”.  This area is littered with rocks deposited by glaciers and the area looks just like the moon. 

We drove a long distance on the road that ran through the Mt. Barry Station.  

This cattle station covers 4920 square kilometers (almost 1900 square miles) with only 3900 head of cattle.  That is only 2 head of cattle per square mile.  There really isn’t much vegetation in this area.  We saw a few cattle (who all checked us out carefully)…

And a water hole with some very dead trees. 

The hole is supplied with water from a nearby water bore.

We saw some wild horses. 

We also drove through Lollipop Lane.  There was an area with trees spaced about 200 meters apart.  The roots are very shallow and spread out around the trunk.  If the roots connect one of the trees dies…competition for water.  They look a little like lollipops.  The guide didn’t know the name of the tree and Googling was unsuccessful…So, they are just lollipop trees. 

Also saw a dead car.   Our guide said that it belonged to the wife of the station owner.  We saw his dead truck later but it was quite a ways from the road.

We were back at the hotel in time for lunch in the underground café of the hotel.

While Paul worked in our cave of a hotel room Mary had a successful opal shopping trip opal.