Day 50 Tour Day
By agreement, I had a lie-in. Paul still decided to get up at the unearthly hour of 8. So she went and did her opal shopping, letter writing and posting and so on. After my brekkie, we lounged a bit and then I went and bought something (can't say what as you never know who might be reading...) and was given an extra 'something' (stop tittering) free! This goes with the little gold coloured man with a wheelbarrow on a piece of rock that I was given gratis yesterday! I'm starting to think the shops are grateful for the company!
An early lunch found us back at the bakery :o)) Pasty again for starters then Paul had the Crazy Lady pavlova thing I had yesterday and my choice was this deeeellliissshhhh vanilla slice. Light and fluffy, perfetto! We had to break the news to them that we're leaving tomorrow. Suitably fuelled, we returned to the cave to prepare for our tour.
The Tour. It was really excellent. About 4 hours of a miscellany of life in Coober Pedy and the outback. First stop one of the two cemeteries. People die/d young here. A lot because they didn't/don't wear dust masks so they get lung diseases, but also because there never used to be much by way of medical help available. A small graveyard but poignant, seeing the simple wooden crosses on a lot of the graves, the touches of humour such as a beer keg, a plaster dog, a couple of benches, as well as a few headstones as we think of them. There was the Catacomb Church, underground of course. We popped in to a real live person's family home, underground of course. You have to be not too worried about dust around here. And everyone has similar wallpaper ;o) An underground pottery led to a comment by a Yank (they get everywhere) that "Oh it's just like what you can get in the Saturday market". Oh no it flipping wasn't. It was very good pottery, and I know my stuff on that score.
Having been to the Old Timer's Mine yesterday, it was really interesting to then go out to the opal fields. You have to apply for a permit to mine, then stake out a claim and take appropriate measurements describing your area to then be able to register your claim with the mining authorities. A small claim is 50x50 metres and a large one is 50x100 metres. Then you can start digging. You sink a shaft on your site, and then start looking to see if you've struck any opal bearing rock. If you do, you keep quiet about it and keep working. This involves digging the opal out by hand, whereas you might well have sunk the shaft by machine or used some explosives. The opals are too fragile for machinery. If you don't find anything then you can pick up your pegs (that mark out your claim), deregister and find another area and go through the whole process again. Mining is generally done early in the day before it gets too hot. Lots of signs around the opal fields warning of danger and stating that only authorised persons can enter (including tour guides). The fields stretch as far as the eye can see and to me they looked like refugee camps, with teepee shaped tents all over the place. The conical shapes being the waste material from the mining.
There are about 1.5 million mine shafts in/around the Coober Pedy area. Shafts can be upto about 90 feet deep, after that you hit the water table. It's salt water before you wonder what all the fuss about lack of water is. Water in the CP area is from a bore and the water has to go through a desalination plant. Water costs $5 per 10,000 litres (I'll check with Paul in case that's wrong) and is delivered to you.
We noodled for opals in an open area, legitimately I should add. About 80% of opals are uncoloured 'potch' which is valueless. There's also a lot of gypsum about which is what plaster is made of. Some tiny slivers of opal were found, mostly by the mad man from the motel and Paul :o)
Then there was Crocodile Harry's place. He only died in October this year, aged 81 or 82. He had an extensive claim or claims into the side of a hill, so there were more of the maze-like diggings that we'd seen yesterday. We wandered through those. The highlight for me being the sight of teeny weeny bats on the ceiling, all huddled together. Awww, I wanted to take one home! So, that was the mine. On approaching Harry's place, we'd had a little taste of what promised to be an 'interesting' character. We entered Harry's 'house', underground of course. It seems he liked ladies. And visitors. The place was quite extensive but covered in memorabilia and messages and gifts from visitors, carvings into the stone (mostly in the female form), photographs of him in his crocodile hunting days, womanising days and so on. Fascinating. As he died so recently, it's yet to be decided what is going to happen to his house and mine. In the meantime, there's always someone there, keeping guard to ensure that the vultures (of the human variety) don't come in and clear the place. Hopefully, it will be preserved as a monument to one man's unique and colourful life. And yes, the pictures will follow.
We drove out to the 'Breakaways' which are rock cliffs and formations which mark one edge of the inland sea that used to be hereabouts. Such wonderful colours. After that was the Moon Plain, which has featured in a film or two, as has Coober Pedy: Mad Max and Priscilla being but two. The best example of the real desert of central Australia that I've seen so far. Just soil and stray rocks and not much else.
I've probably missed something but hopefully not. On the wildlife front, today's count was: kangaroos, cockatoos, lizards. Oh yes, we saw the dingo fence. Longest fence in the world, designed to keep the dingos from eating the sheep. Now which were there first...? I still haven't seen one, mind you. Another 'merican gem here.... we've just been told about the reason for the dingo fence and one of them asks "Is there any livestock around here?".
This evening, we're going back to the pizza place as it was pretty good. Might have another beer, I suppose. Tomorrow, we're off to visit some relatives who live back a little south of Port Augusta in what might be called relative civilisation!
If you're ever passing by this way, do please stop off at Coober Pedy, it's great!
PS Actually, there were four people reading as someone did e-mail me too :0)
An early lunch found us back at the bakery :o)) Pasty again for starters then Paul had the Crazy Lady pavlova thing I had yesterday and my choice was this deeeellliissshhhh vanilla slice. Light and fluffy, perfetto! We had to break the news to them that we're leaving tomorrow. Suitably fuelled, we returned to the cave to prepare for our tour.
The Tour. It was really excellent. About 4 hours of a miscellany of life in Coober Pedy and the outback. First stop one of the two cemeteries. People die/d young here. A lot because they didn't/don't wear dust masks so they get lung diseases, but also because there never used to be much by way of medical help available. A small graveyard but poignant, seeing the simple wooden crosses on a lot of the graves, the touches of humour such as a beer keg, a plaster dog, a couple of benches, as well as a few headstones as we think of them. There was the Catacomb Church, underground of course. We popped in to a real live person's family home, underground of course. You have to be not too worried about dust around here. And everyone has similar wallpaper ;o) An underground pottery led to a comment by a Yank (they get everywhere) that "Oh it's just like what you can get in the Saturday market". Oh no it flipping wasn't. It was very good pottery, and I know my stuff on that score.
Having been to the Old Timer's Mine yesterday, it was really interesting to then go out to the opal fields. You have to apply for a permit to mine, then stake out a claim and take appropriate measurements describing your area to then be able to register your claim with the mining authorities. A small claim is 50x50 metres and a large one is 50x100 metres. Then you can start digging. You sink a shaft on your site, and then start looking to see if you've struck any opal bearing rock. If you do, you keep quiet about it and keep working. This involves digging the opal out by hand, whereas you might well have sunk the shaft by machine or used some explosives. The opals are too fragile for machinery. If you don't find anything then you can pick up your pegs (that mark out your claim), deregister and find another area and go through the whole process again. Mining is generally done early in the day before it gets too hot. Lots of signs around the opal fields warning of danger and stating that only authorised persons can enter (including tour guides). The fields stretch as far as the eye can see and to me they looked like refugee camps, with teepee shaped tents all over the place. The conical shapes being the waste material from the mining.
There are about 1.5 million mine shafts in/around the Coober Pedy area. Shafts can be upto about 90 feet deep, after that you hit the water table. It's salt water before you wonder what all the fuss about lack of water is. Water in the CP area is from a bore and the water has to go through a desalination plant. Water costs $5 per 10,000 litres (I'll check with Paul in case that's wrong) and is delivered to you.
We noodled for opals in an open area, legitimately I should add. About 80% of opals are uncoloured 'potch' which is valueless. There's also a lot of gypsum about which is what plaster is made of. Some tiny slivers of opal were found, mostly by the mad man from the motel and Paul :o)
Then there was Crocodile Harry's place. He only died in October this year, aged 81 or 82. He had an extensive claim or claims into the side of a hill, so there were more of the maze-like diggings that we'd seen yesterday. We wandered through those. The highlight for me being the sight of teeny weeny bats on the ceiling, all huddled together. Awww, I wanted to take one home! So, that was the mine. On approaching Harry's place, we'd had a little taste of what promised to be an 'interesting' character. We entered Harry's 'house', underground of course. It seems he liked ladies. And visitors. The place was quite extensive but covered in memorabilia and messages and gifts from visitors, carvings into the stone (mostly in the female form), photographs of him in his crocodile hunting days, womanising days and so on. Fascinating. As he died so recently, it's yet to be decided what is going to happen to his house and mine. In the meantime, there's always someone there, keeping guard to ensure that the vultures (of the human variety) don't come in and clear the place. Hopefully, it will be preserved as a monument to one man's unique and colourful life. And yes, the pictures will follow.
We drove out to the 'Breakaways' which are rock cliffs and formations which mark one edge of the inland sea that used to be hereabouts. Such wonderful colours. After that was the Moon Plain, which has featured in a film or two, as has Coober Pedy: Mad Max and Priscilla being but two. The best example of the real desert of central Australia that I've seen so far. Just soil and stray rocks and not much else.
I've probably missed something but hopefully not. On the wildlife front, today's count was: kangaroos, cockatoos, lizards. Oh yes, we saw the dingo fence. Longest fence in the world, designed to keep the dingos from eating the sheep. Now which were there first...? I still haven't seen one, mind you. Another 'merican gem here.... we've just been told about the reason for the dingo fence and one of them asks "Is there any livestock around here?".
This evening, we're going back to the pizza place as it was pretty good. Might have another beer, I suppose. Tomorrow, we're off to visit some relatives who live back a little south of Port Augusta in what might be called relative civilisation!
If you're ever passing by this way, do please stop off at Coober Pedy, it's great!
PS Actually, there were four people reading as someone did e-mail me too :0)
posted by womble at
12/12/2006 06:30:00 pm
4 Comments:
it's going to be a bit of an anticlimax comng home innit?
good job mini and mega are here otherwise there might be nothing to tempt you back
xx
By
beanz, at December 12, 2006 10:05 am
This is such a good advert for the Ozzie Tourist Board - you should sell it to them on your return - or publish it! "Diary of a Womble in Wombat Land" or some such thing!
By
Anonymous, at December 13, 2006 11:47 am
Pmx
good point indeed
It sound amazing
By
b-z, at December 13, 2006 12:56 pm
I forgot to mention the Coober Pedy golf course. First of all you get your own piece of astroturf which you place under the ball before you hit it. Then there's trouble with the lizards who nick the golf balls when they're feeling playful. Night golf is cooler but more nightlife including people who think it's a good laugh to move the glowstick that's on the flag that you're aiming at! Ho ho. I loved that place and its sense of humour!
By
womble, at December 17, 2006 3:21 am
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