Wide open spaces

As we left Oodnadatta, Oli in particular was very excited. Our next stop would be Coober Pedy and this was his number one place he wanted to go on the whole trip. Being a budding geologist, he wanted to check out the opals that Coober Pedy is famous for and hopefully buy ‘a few’ as well. The drive was fairly uneventful, but we passed a couple of amazing landscapes that we stopped at to investigate.

The first was a flat, rocky nothingness with a few small pockets of grass but little else. There was a wide variety of different coloured and textured rocks on the surface. We got Oli’s pick axe out and smashed a few of the rocks to see what was inside. They broke off in shards that created smooth flat surfaces along with a sharp edge. We imagined they might have been used by the aborigines to create tips for spears, or cutting tools.

After driving down ‘lollipop lane’, a signposted section of the track with trees that look like lollipops (quirky outback humour is everywhere out here and very entertaining), just as we could see Coober Pedy in the distance, we came upon another desolate area with sparkling rocks. We found out later that the rock field was covered with chunks of gypsum, which resembled opaque layers of glass sandwiched together. The only thing to do with such rocks was to collect them, find the biggest samples, and then smash them all to pieces.

In Coober Pedy we stayed in a great little place which though little more than the large dirt yard of a very friendly and knowledgable local called Gary, it had a great atmosphere and felt safe. We squeezed in next to the derelict bus Gary lived in, and the kids got straight to noodling, the term used to describe fossicking for opals. They had fun finding lots of opal shards right there in the campground, and we spent the next three days trying to stop them storing their vast collection of rock samples on the kitchen bench, on the tables, and in our bowls and cups. Somehow we managed to get the kids to whittle their collections down to a manageable size before we left, which they planned to take on the road with them to try and sell to people in other campgrounds along the way. They even conned their parents into buying a couple of the better ones!

On our first morning the kids were keen to head into town and buy some opals. Unfortunately Oli was a bit disillusioned after visiting the first place as he realised that the nice looking opals were a lot more than $10 and way out of his budget. Fortunately we found some that were much cheaper but still kept the kids happy, so with purchases made, we grabbed some food for lunch and then headed out to Faye’s Underground House and Mine.

Faye Nayler was one of the first women miner’s in Coober Pedy, and also one of the most successful. She dug out her house with nothing more than her hand mining tools and the help of her two friends, right next to her mine. These days it is preserved so people can see her house as it was when she left it, as well as the mine she worked in. The house was very comfortable, complete with kitchen, living and dining areas as well as bedrooms. Apparently it was the party place back in the 1960’s, and once we got to the end of the tour we could see why. Not only did it have the bar area with a very well stocked liquor room, but the back of the house had a cocktail bar, pool table as well as built in pool! We could only imagine what the parties must have been like, with a bunch of hard working and sometimes eccentric miners mixed with alcohol.

The next day, after a quick visit to Vinnies to let the kids buy some treats (Em picked up some fairy wings for 50c and Oli bought 8 Pokémon books for $2), we headed to the public noodling area to see if we could find our fortune. Surprisingly, it was not to be. Instead we headed to the animal shelter to help feed some kangaroos a strange mix of seeds combined with wasabi peas, and watch a joey being fed. Oli also bought a boulder opal, a polished brownish rock with opal flecks set within it.

After lunch, we drove out to a place called The Breakaways, about an hour out of Coober Pedy. The drive out took us past the current mining plots, with literally hundreds of small mounds of dirt lining both sides of the road, where miners have dug test holes in search of the elusive opal. The Breakaways themselves interrupted the otherwise flat and featureless landscape with rock formations rising up from the ground in varied shapes and colours ranging from pure white, giving the impression it was made from pure talc, through to rich browns and reds more aligned to the rocks and earth around this area. We drove and wandered around the area for an hour or so before heading back to Coober Pedy for our last night.