Thursday, 10/25 Coober Pedy to Roadside rest north of CB

The Flintstones would have felt right at home here

     We ate our oatmeal and coffee in the camp kitchen, talking politics with the European kids, then went back to the library and Skyped with our son Ryan. Always nice to hear and see a loved one on the other side of the planet. Then we got out and explored Coober Pedy.

     Opal forms when dissolved silica collects at certain seams between layers of sandstone. To find it, you get an augur and drill a one foot diameter hole straight down 30 to 100 feet. If you find anything promising in the gravel you've produced by drilling the hole, you get a bigger augur, this one four or five feet in diameter, and drill another hole.

The hole from above...

... and from down below

     Then you lower yourself down into the hole, and begin digging. Your choices are a pick and shovel, explosives, or a small mining excavator. As you dig, you generate gravel, which you get back to the surface somehow and make piles.

Inside a mine, nine blast holes already drilled at left center of photo

     Instead of blasting you can disassemble this piece of machinery,

lower it part by part down into your mine, and put it back together 

again.It runs on electricity so you don't foul the air with exhaust.  

It's smaller than it looks, the main body is about knee high,

Piles of gravel like these extend for an area about 30 miles long and
5 miles wide.

     The easiest way is to suck it out with a truck-vac.

There are times we could use this to sweep our house, like after the New Years Eve Party

Once you suck enough mine gravel it dumps out of the big barrel
and you've got another pile

The truck-vacs come in all sizes...

... and shapes, and all are home made

     There is no large scale mining because the veins are too hit and miss and the payoff uncertain, so all of the mining is done by human moles who have to work other jobs just to keep themselves supplied with diesel and explosives. I wonder if any of them have struck it rich
     However, in the process of looking for opal the locals have become pretty good diggers, and in the unforgiving desert heat they figured out that living in the mines they've abandoned was a pretty good idea. Eventually they began opening up champers just for the pleasure of living in a constant 70 temperature, and then discovered that tourists would jump at the chance to stay in underground motels, hotels, and campgrounds. A resident told us that 80% of CP's population live underground. He said that only claustrophobics, Greeks, Asians and Aboriginals live aboveground.

Inside a dug-out house

The kitchen.  Cozy, huh?

     Not surprisingly, CP and surrounding areas have been a popular spot for filmmakers, and some of the props have been left behind;

Have we landed on Mars?

     All in all, it's a pretty wacky place, and Australian tourists either love or hate it. I tend to side with the former, and while I don't picture myself going opal crazy, I could see myself changing from tree-house building mode to digging my own dugout house.

 

My next building project

     We bought a roasted chicken and a loaf of bread at an IGA, and drove out a few km to eat it overlooking an extensive mining field.

     Then, after licking the chicken fat off my fingers, we drove an hour north on the Stuart Highway and pulled off at a rest area for the night.