Tour Day 3:
The third day of our tour started with a long lie, the sun
was actually up before I stepped outside the tent! The rain had stopped
sometime during the night leaving large puddles behind which I side stepped on
my way to breakfast, grateful I didn’t need my umbrella to get there. Once everyone
was up and about and had eaten we cleared away the breakfast things, loaded up
the trailer and were soon on the bus again off to out next adventure. Our
destination this time was a mining town called Cooper Pedy via another
important aboriginal site known to us as the breakaways. Australia is ancient.
The hills and mountains have been eroded to their present size and the long
gone seas have left deposits which have solidified and been eroded by weather
and tectonic movement giving the seemingly endless landscape stunning features
such as Uluru, Kings Canyon, Kata Tjutu and now this vast area broken up by
once again similar yet different features. Unlike the previous sites we didn’t
venture down in to them but admired them from above (taking the obligatory
million photographs of course) until it was time to get back on the bus and
finish the drive to Cooper Pedy. On the way there we were split in to two groups and informed
that we would be set challenges along the way to Adelaide and the team with the
most points at the end would get a prize. Sadly as the last to get on the bus
my friend and I were separated by a German couple and we ended up on separate
teams. Though this worked out quite well for me as at least all of my team
spoke fluent English!
After unloading the trailer our first stop was at tour of
the one of the many mines in the small town. We started with a film explaining
the history of the town and how it came to its current incarnation. The main
feature and attraction of the town after the opals is that it is mostly underground.
After the second world war the men who returned head to Cooper Pedy to make their
fortune. As there were no trees for miles around the ex-soldiers, used to
building trenches, simply dug in to the hillsides and made their homes there.
These days the residents use machinery but living underground is still the predominant
way of life there. After the film we
were shown how opals are cut and polished from their rough state in to the
stone we see in the stores. Next we were taken underground to see a basic hand
mined room that showed how the original settlers lived before being shown a
modern setup which looked a lot like a any other home except for the lack of
windows. We walked from the house through some tunnels where we were given a
short talk on current mining methods and shown a seam of opal in the rock. A
quick look round the shop and cultural centre and it was back to our accommodations
for lunch. Like much of the town out hostel was built in to one of the hills making
it a very different hostel than any I had staying in before.
Post lunch we were given a quick tour of the town including
an underground church and the coolest grave ever before stopping at a lookout
point and getting a good overview of the town. Tour over some of us stopped by
the public noodling area to look through the waste rock for small opals. I was
a bit sceptical but it was surprisingly addictive and we found many pretty
rocks but no big opals, though our guide did find a small one worth cutting and
polishing. Noodling is dirty work so I was glad we had time for a shower before
our pizza dinner, especially as we wouldn;t have to do any prep, cooking or
clearing up ourselves for once. Usually dinner signals the end of the days
activities but not this time. After dinner we were taken to Josephine’s Gallery
where we saw some pretty good aboriginal art work and didgeridoos. Josephine’s
isn’t just a gallery though it is also a Kangaroo orphanage. They take in orphaned
Joeys and bring them back to health before releasing them to the wild or into
one of the many sanctuaries in the country. We were fortunate enough to meet
some of the orphans who for whatever reason wouldn’t survive in the wild and a
couple of new arrivals that they hoped to release once they were well enough to
survive on their own. As if all this
wasn’t enough we then had the added bonus of being taken out to a shooting
range and I had my first attempt at using a shot gun. I am pleased to say I hit
two of the clay pigeons though I am sure it was blind luck not skill both times
and am even more please to say that our highest scorer was a fellow scot!
Tour Day 4:
Day four was a day of driving. We were up with the sun and left Cooper Pedy shortly after 8am to head south once more. We did stop at the flying doctor run way and attempted to
land our own paper planes across it but the wind had other ideas. The direction
of the wind meant that most of them went sideways rather than across the road! My
team had the ingenious idea of scrunching up one of the planes and throwing it
though so we won the challenge for which team got a plane furthest across the
road. We passed through Glendambo which had the most interesting population
sign I have seen yet and stopped at Lake Hart; one of the smaller dry salt pans
it seemed to stretch for miles in to the distance. We stopped for lunch at
Woomera where I earned some bonus points for my team by drinking a small sup of
salad dressing before checking out the nearby birds. After lunch we stopped to
look at some old rockets and planes as the town has it’s own rocket range.
Woomera is a strange town. It has a tiny population yet it has a baseball field
and oval that are kept in excellent repair and though many building look
deserted there is evidence that people still live and work their though we only
saw a handful of people whilst we were passing through, It’s easy to see why it
could be the object of more than one conspiracy theory! After lunch we had a quick look at the rockets and planes on display nearby then it was back
to the bus and on to our home for the next two nights, an old converted Mill in
a place called Quorn. Once there we were given a break from meal duties as a tour
going North were also going to be there for the same two nights so they took
cooked and cleaned giving us a much appreciated break. After a day in the bus
it was nice to spend the evening relaxing outside with a cold cider before
getting an early night as we had a busy day ahead of us the next day. We had
agreed to fit the last two day tour in to one so that we could stop at some
wineries on the way in to Adelaide!
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