Coober Pedy to Uluru

A long drive from Coober Pedy sees us arrive at Uluru campground just around sunset, so there's no point in going out to the rock tonight. Instead we jump on the bikes and try to find a cool beer and some food. Luckily enough the resort has an Outback Bar and BBQ.

As we chain up the bikes and walk up to the bar I hear the lilting country-jazz stylings of Chet Atkins in the air, which though it pleases me seems a bit odd in a tourist place. It turns out that the music is live and guitarist Mal Clarke is working his way through a repretoire of finger pickin classics, including Yankee Doodle Dixie, one of Chet's seminal lessons in fingerstyle guitar.

Whilst I am suitably impressed, the audience however are completely non-plussed and we both feel a bit sorry for the guy.

After a small break he fires into the Aussie classics in an attempt to get a bit of an atmosphere going. Even the bush reggae version of Waltzin' Matilda has little effect, and when he tries to get some audience participation going there's only me and Mandy and maybe 2 other people who give it a go. Mal's face gets grim. After calling everyone a 'bunch of drongos' he takes another break. Then he comes back with some dad-rock classics and finishes to my utter shock with a rendition of Joe Satriani's 'Surfing with the Alien'.
Nice work fella.

Despite Mandy's protestations I don't have the nouse to go and congratulate him on his work, so Mandy does it on my behalf and surprises the man by throwing in the names of Chet and Joe, so his night is slightly improved by this flattery. Much better coming from her than from me I reckon (?).

After a chicken tikka burger with an unfeasibly small piece of chicken in it, and a couple of cold ones we head back to the van.

Spaceport Coober Pedy to Uluru

We take an hour to zip round the remaining main sites of Coober Pedy before heading on a long day's drive to Uluru.

The Big Winch

Umona Miner

Spacehsip left when filming 'Pitch Black'

Coober Pedy is a fascinating place and the people are friendly but slightly evasive. Not that we've spoken to many people, but you get the feeling that people who come here are here for a reason other than mining. There's solitude and there's solitude after all. Still, I would recommend that anyone spend at least a day here and try to understand a compelling town sitting in one of the most inhospitable parts of the planet.

It's easy to see why they filmed Mad Max, Pitch Black and Red Planet here.

And I can thoroughly recommend sleeping underground, you'll have the best sleep of your life. But make sure you set your alarm clock as relying on the sun peeking through your curtains to wake you up is not advisable.

Fossicking Folly

Coober Pedy isn't just some weird hangout for troglodite hermits, it does have a reason for being here. That reason is opal, and about 70 percent of the world's production comes from here. So the combination of mining and the extreme temperatures have led to it's underground lifestyle.

These temperatures, the road conditions, the proliferation of small diameter but very deep holes, and the use of high explosives; leads us to believe that a guided tour of the area is the best option.

Radeka's tour is recommended to us by our hotel so we head there.

The tour guide Brian is a knowledgeable local and he takes us out first of all to the Underground Anglican Church.

Then we head up to the local cemetery to see the graves of some local legends.

Next stop is the full size, 18 hole Coober Pedy Golf Course. Here, you have to carry your own patch of grass around with you, and you rake the greens before you putt. Brian tells us that they're affiliated with St. Andrew's so I ask him if they've ever been over. He tells me that they went over to St. Andrew's a few years back and weren't allowed to play on anything but the poor man's course. I thought this seemed pretty low in itself, but then Brian tells me that St. Andrew's Golf Club actually own an opal mine here as well. So these guys risk their lives mining opal for you, travel 10,000 miles and you can't even give them a go on your golf course!

18th 'Green'

The First Fairway

But my prejudices about golf clubs are well documented, so let's not dwell on that.
Our next stop is the mines themselves and some hands on fossicking (or noodling). This is not quite as deviant as it sounds and involves raking around piles of rubble looking for discarded or unnoticed slivers of opal. Found nothing of course.

Good Sign

From our fossicking follies we move over to Crocodile Harry's house. Harry was a European baron who moved to Coober Pedy to mine opal and become something of a local legend and possible inspiration for Crocodile Dundee.

Harry's Front Door(s) may look familiar to fans of Mad Max

He was also obviously a bit of an art buff and his house has become a sculpture park/film set/museum of everything and everyone who passed through it.

Particularly impressive is the photo of him spearing a 7 metre crocodile, whose mouth he would quite easily have fit in.

Next stop after Crocodile Harry's are the Breakaway Ranges. I think the photos will suffice as a description. One French woman refuses to get out and take photos because she reckons it's artificial (huh?). Must be sunstroke.



We head down to the base of the breakaways and then visit the Dog Proof Fence. This is the longest man made structure on earth at around 5300km long. We're curious as to how you can build something so long without the dingoes just walking around the ends.

Either side of us stretches an area known as the Moon Plain on which there are no grasses, plants or anything but rocks for about 100 miles on either side.

Port Augusta to Coober Pedy

The Grey Nomads are well prepared

Our lush green campsite in Port Augusta

This is where the real driving begins. The distances increase, the opportunities for supplies and petrol decrease. And the consequences of any mishaps become potentially life threatening. The 535km from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy starts another 2000km of similar conditions to Darwin.

I've driven long distances before and across desert landscapes as well but nothing has quite prepared me for this. The outback is exactly what you expect, it's huge and flat, which is why when you do see something that deviates from this it's quite a surprise. Emus pecking at the scrub at the side of the road, massive salt lakes, like Lake Eyre (the world's largest), even some of the smaller ones are larger than a lot of countries, (I won't use Wales for comparisons, everybody does that and most people really have no idea how big or small Wales is).

It's been said before and will be again...'There's a whole lot of nothing out here'.


And we're heading for Coober Pedy which is right in the middle of this nothing....Not only that, but it's one of the hottest places on the planet, and 80 percent of the people live underground. And we're about to join them for a couple of days.

This is our underground hotel room in our undeground hotel.