Port Augusta to Coober Pedy

PORT AUGUSTA to COOBER PEDY 6/7/21 – 10/7/21

After spending 8 days in Port Augusta we finally headed off on our journey north with the new airbags fitted to the car. First stop was the town of Woomera which was once the experimental rocket range used during 1960’s to 1980’s. The town is still home to A.I.F. personnel. The visitor centre had a museum with information on the rocket testing and outside displays of old aircraft and rockets. We headed off to Roxby Downs where we stayed for the night. The countryside around was mainly flat plains with typical red soil and little vegetation apart from clumping grasses and low growing bushes. There were some areas of red sand dunes dotted with spinifex grass. Roxby Downs is a neat looking town which is home to many of the mine workers from the Olympic Dam BHP mine site nearby. The dam and mine site are inaccessible to the public so we weren’t able to see the dam at all which was a bit disappointing. The following day’s drive took us back to the Stuart Highway and north towards Glendambo where we planned to spend the night. We passed plains which were flat to the horizon - either red soil or gibber stones dotted with spinifex. We stopped to view a couple of mostly dry, large lakes. One was Island lagoon and the other Lake Hart and both had a very white looking surface which I suspect was salt. Glendambo consists of a Hotel and a service station and camping is at the rear of the pub. We enjoyed a drink at the pub after tea. The next morning we headed off, bound for Coober Pedy. The weather has been gradually getting warmer during the day. As we neared Coober Pedy we saw lots of evidence of opal mining with huge areas covered with mullock heaps and the landscape became a little hillier. We camped at the Opal caravan park and during the three days we were there we visited some of the tourist sites including a couple of underground churches named the Catacomb (named after the Catacombs in Rome) and a Serbian church. Each was unique and beautiful inside. We also went to see the Old Timers Mine and Museum which also housed an opal shop. It was fascinating to learn about how the people lived and carried out their mining with mostly hand tools back in the early 1900’s. We also saw an underground home at this site complete with 1960’s furniture. We also visited a much more modern underground Desert Cave Hotel complex which also contained more history and information on the area. The Coober Pedy landscape is unique! Because of the dry climate there is no grass anywhere, just red dirt and only a few trees and the hills around the town are all excavated for underground houses or mining and the entrances are little more than a door and maybe a carport next to it. There are mullock hills and old machinery and wrecked cars rusting away everywhere and the community is made up of many different nationalities and a large community of Aboriginal people. It is the opal capital of the world, producing more than 80% of the world’s opal. We also took a half day drive out to an area called The Breakaways which is a mountain range which has been eroded away over millions of years leaving only mesas standing. The colours of these bare mountains range from the familiar reds and browns to very pale sand colour and the effect is very different. All around are gibber plains with only sparce vegetation. On our return journey we passed huge areas of mining activity on a big scale with lots of heavy equipment used to gouge out the open cut areas. On our last evening in Coober Pedy we treated ourselves to the famous John’s Pizza (which they told us was in the top five in the world!) We then drove to the drive-in and parked on the red dirt mounds to watch the movie Cruella. We hadn’t been to a drive-in movie for about fifty years!!Read more