Flinders Ranges

Thanks to our ‘Travel Advisors’ Cass, Lyn and Leanne as it was on their advice that we made a last minute decision to detour off and visit Uluru National Park. The photo’s I took did not do justice to this place. Finished the day off with a Sunset Dinner, it was one of the best days of our trip :-) We travelled nearly 500km the next day to get to Coober Pedy where we booked in CPark for 3 nights, it was a great Park. The ‘town’ itself was nothing like I imagined, but it was full of surprises as many places you enter at ground level and inside they have created some beautiful spaces and homes from the underground opal tunnels. We were told to “book a tour of the town” well there is only one tour company operating and they were booked out so we got ourselves a self-guide Tourist Map and BB added extra point s of interest! These extra’s included both the Hotels, the Big Winch Restaurant, the Bakery (great vanilla slices) we went there twice, Race Course, Italian Cafe for breakfast (which was very authentic our brecky was cooked by Indians), the Football Oval. The Golf Club was like no other, a good Clubhouse on top of a big opal hill but it appeared to not be in use, some of the Tee’s are only suitable for young and fit mountain goats. The course itself would be stinking hot most of the year and windy being so flat with not a blade of grass or a tree or bush in sight. Driving around we accidentally came across the now abandoned ‘Coober Pedy Bowls Club’ Not sure who they would have played apart from each other? Maybe that was the problem? The Greens are near rotted through with the sun, the Clubhouse a substantial brick building is reasonably new Opened in 2006, So sad to see the greens and clubhouse boarded up broken glass and rubbish everywhere and all going to ruin. Apart from these extra’s we did all the other touristy things on the town map, including Oldtimers Mine, lots of Churches, drove out to the Breakaways and Dog Fence and of course visited many of the Opal Shops in town. Never was a fan of Opals but they grow on you so ‘we’ bought a solid opal on a gold clasp to put on my chain. It would be hard to spend money in that town as there are relatively no shops. There are no lawns to mow or gardens to take care of so I wonder what they do on week ends? Just one small supermarket, no Garden Nursery so there is no way could I could ever live there. Leaving Coober Pedy we weren’t sure where we would end up but in the end it was easy quick stop at Glendambo decided to give that place a miss a stop at Pimba for lunch (great hamburger) it was too early so we kept going and ended up at Stirling North (Pt. Augusta) another big driving day but BB did not mind as we had ‘radio’ coverage for quite a bit of it :-) We are now at Quorn and our trip is just about done. Meeting up with friends for tea at the Pub tonight, BB is playing Bowls tomorrow and for something different we are going to a racetrack on Saturday the Quorn Cup :-) Home sometime Monday!Les mer