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  • Day 43

    Opal Capital of the World

    February 21, 2018 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 36 °C

    So yesterday I claimed William Creek only has a pub. That's not entirely true. They also have an airstrip, so Aina, Danielle, (new) Emily, Katie, and I took a one hour flight to the painted hills. The painted hills are small hills made from soft rock with high iron content. They are completely of limits to the public and therefore in pristine state, however, as it is made from soft rock they are slowly eroding. But being 50 meters tall and stretching for 35 km and being 10 km wide, the painted hills won't be gone any time soon.
    On the way their we went by Anna Creek cattle station, the largest cattle station in the world, with 6.5 million acres or 26000 kilometres squared. And the painted hills are with Anna Creek station's land. The flight was done in a Cessna 210 at about 1500 feet and was about 200 km.
    After breakfast we left the Oodnadatta track to drive towards Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world.
    On the way we stopped at the longest man made structure in the world. A 5000+ km long fence that keeps the Dingos north of the fence, as the south side is sheep country and the north side is cattle country.
    We made it to Coober Pedy and had some free time before going for a tour in the Umoona mine, it was cool as it gave a historical view on the opal mining in Australia.
    Cara took us to her friend Terry, who has an art gallery/kangaroo sanctuary with his wife Josephine. So hand fed big red kangaroos and saw him feed a baby. At was a cool surprise.
    We slept "underground" or rather inside a hill in a dugout.
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