White man in hole

For the last two days we have been in Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy is an aboriginal word meaning white man in hole/burrow. Coober Pedy is home to 70% of the worlds mined opals. The opal found in Coober Pedy is the white opal. QLD has the boulder opal, without the white. To get to Coober Pedy we took the Oodnadatta Track, a 4wd track, that ranges between 10kmph hour and 80 kmph, with wandering cows and other livestock. The road is either, rock, gravel, sand, or clay. (Route attached). We booked ourselves into an underground motel. It is set in stone, which used to be an old mine. The stone keeps the room cool.

Aslan chose to have a relax day in the room with some huge ass pizzas that were 18 inch in diameter. In the town there are about 40 Opal shops, an IGA, two petrol stations and car maintenance places. It's flat and walkable. The funny thing I saw was a lot of redheads in town, not sure what the story is there, too hot for red heads. You will see from the photos the discarded rock mounds from the mines, people look for missed opals in these piles which is called Noodling.

After stocking up and leaving Coober Pedy we headed north into the Northern Territory where the speed limit is 130. It was a 5-hr drive north through the desert but on a sealed road. We are staying at Ghan, Erldunda Homestead for the night then onto Uluru for two days which is 200km west. Aslan’s aircon is kicking ass already and has cooled us down already as it was 28 when we arrived with a low of 21. The landscape changes as soon as we hit NT, it changes from red dust to more rock foundations. I'll get some photos of this in the next post. We will be in the Territory for the rest of October including Alice Springs, Katherine, Darwin, and Kakadu. We will then head west to Broome, a remote 5-day trip to beat the wet season which starts at the end of October - April.Read more