Stats Overview
Km's Travelled: 1187
Km's Hiked: 0
No. of Campsites: 5
The Adventures
And just like that, we have made it 4 months on the road! We have had a big week and have covered a lot of ground to make it across the border into the Northern Territory. We are absolutely loving the red centre and are excited to be spending the next few weeks in the area exploring it further.
We started our week still in South Australia at Coober Pedy. I will not lie, Coober Pedy is one of the wackiest places I think I have ever seen and probably will see on this trip. When you drive into town it is like you have arrived on another planet! There are just mounds of dirt everywhere, hardly any grass, an assortment of above and underground houses and half the roads are bitumen and the other half dirt. Not to mention the plethora of mining equipment that litters the streets and backyards of the town along with all the air vents that stick out of the ground for the underground houses. We learned that opal mining is one of the last forms of mining to be completed by individuals rather than big corporations, as financially it is too high of a risk because finding opal is so hit and miss. AKA BHP can't guarantee it will make billions! Aside from the opals, the other major attraction of the town are the underground buildings that the locals refer to as dugouts. The dugouts were originally built so that the locals could escape the intense heat of the summers. We visited two dugouts, an underground church and an underground opal mine while we were in town. The underground houses are the most amazing thing I have ever seen. They have all the comforts of a house (although originally no bathroom below ground) with the fun factor of rock as your walls and floor. If you want to add a shelf you literally just dig it out of the rock! You can be as creative as you like with your interior, which we saw when we visited the big tourist attraction of Crocodile Harry's place. He very much liked to decorate his walls and had a crocodile as well as a number of ladies carved into the rock. We also had a go at noodling for opal at the public noodling grounds where I was lucky enough to find the tiniest bit of white opal. Thanks to Coober Pedy our new favourite show to watch is "Outback Opal Hunters" while we dream of making it rich from finding opal one day!
After Coober Pedy we started the big drive into the Northern Territory. Aside from an occassional roadhouse, there is very little between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs, so it felt like one of the longest stretches of road on our trip. Once crossing the border into the NT it is pretty exciting to see the new speed limit of 130! Not that we can go that fast with the van on the back and, with diesel at nearly $3/L, our fuel economy has become very important! After crossing the border our first stop was at Kulgera which we used as a base to go and visit the official geographical centre of the Australian continent. It was a 280km round trip on entirely dirt roads which, for the most part, were in pretty good condition - except for the final 12kms into the monument which clearly weren't maintained. There were a number of tracks and detours and it was a constant battle to know which track to be on and which one to avoid, as there were many washouts and still a lot of water around. We were very pleasantly surprised to see how green the countryside is up here - they really have had a very good wet season this year! After a stressful couple of hours we made it to the monument which marks the centre of Australia. This monument was named after Dr Bruce Lambert who was one of the top cartographers of Australia. The task to determine the centre of Australia was very difficult to achieve due to the shape of the continent, however, the feat was accomplished by taking the data from 24,500 high-tide line markings from the Australian coastline. I don't really understand the process after that so you will have to do your own research! To commemorate the spot they have put a small scale replica of the flag seen flying from parliament house in Canberra.
We spent a couple of nights at Curtin Springs thinking it would be a good base for Will to work before we headed out to Uluru. However, unfortunately peak season is nearing and we couldn't get into the caravan park until the weekend. So we have back tracked a little to Petermann which we are going to use as a base to explore Kings Canyon before we make our way out to see the Big Rock. Looks like we might have to start planning ahead for our accommodation a little more than the day we arrive!
Kodak Moments
 |
| Mandatory tourist photo - Coober Pedy |
 |
| Serbian Orthodox Underground Church - Coober Pedy |
 |
| Ticked off a few big things in Coober Pedy - Big Winch |
 |
| Down an old opal mine, just big enough for Will - Coober Pedy |
 |
| Resting underground at Faye's dugout after a hard day of being a tourist - Coober Pedy |
 |
| Trying our luck noodling for opal (we're not rich yet!) - Coober Pedy |
 |
| We saw a crocodile in the desert! One of many carvings into the rock wall - Crocodile Harry's Dugout |
 |
| I am now obsessed with dugouts - Crocodile Harry's |
 |
| The landscape around Coober Pedy is covered in mounds of dirt from the opal mines |
 |
| Hello to the NT! |
 |
| We made it to the official centre of Australia - Lambert Geographical Centre |
 |
| Loving the red dirt of the NT |
 |
| We have changed a bit on our travels... although Will still isn't allowed a dog! - Kulgera |
 |
| My tour of the big things continues into the NT - Kulgera |
 |
| A fully loaded, double decker cattle road train. The size of the trucks are crazy in the NT! |
 |
| Made a new friend at our campsite - Curtin Springs |
Comments
Post a Comment