Coober Pedy

What a fascinating place this is!! When you drive in you see a dusty place with one disjointed street and you think it has nothing to offer. How wrong you are!!
Coober Pedy is one of the largest opal mining places in the world and many people come here to make their fortune. It has the special attraction of a totally different lifestyle. People who live here love it and many who come to “have a look” end up staying.
80% of the population live underground and there is an underground hotel, four underground churches,
an underground bookshop and many more. The beauty of living underground is that you can just dig out a few rooms and if you want to extend you just dig out another room. If you need a bookcase or a shelf you “dig it out”
The climate here is over 40 degrees in the summer and cold in the winter. If you live underground the constant temperature is between 22 to 25 degrees.
I visited the Desert Cave Hotel which is a luxury hotel built underground. There are tunnels of history and information about CP as well as a bar, restaurant etc.
There are lots of shops that sell opals which have all been mined and polished here.
The next day we drove around the town and visited the Serbian Church which was beautiful and Fay’s underground house. Fay arrived in the town when she was 29 for an outback experience and ended up staying, taking up a mining lease, establishing a café and digging out a two bedroom house by hand. She later extended this to three bedrooms and even had a swimming pool (the first one in Coober Pedy). The house is now open for viewing and is actually lived in at the moment. It is like a normal house with everything in it- even the TV works well. The underground houses have a calming feeling and you get no noise from your neighbours!!



The mining here is very interesting. You dig a shaft 20 to 30 feet deep and then tunnel out from there. They use explosives to blast some of the rock.
The excess rock is removed by a blower (which is like a huge vacuum cleaner) which sucks all the rubble and rocks out of the mine. Then you look for traces of opal in the exposed wall and follow this until you come to the main seam. You have to be very careful not to break the opal so you chip away underneath the seam with a pick (still today) until you can prise the opal out. Of course in the early days everything was done by hand- winching bucket loads of rubble up to the surface, tunnelling with picks – all extremely hard work. Because of all of the rubble that has to come out of the mines, the countryside around CP is like a moonscape with mullock heaps everywhere and we were surprised how extensive this was.

That afternoon I visited the Old Timer’s mine was the original mine started in 1915 all dug out by hand.
We had a demonstration of the equipment used in the mines now. We were showed how the blower works (which is set on the back of a truck) and we even fed a large piece of rock into the blower and it was sucked up immediately. We then saw how the tunnelling machine works. David explained how in the early days he had to winch all the rubble out with a drum and how you had to keep two hands on the winch while the flies and mosquitoes drove you mad. You partner was down below loading up the drum with the rubble.
After our demo you went on a self guided tour of the mine. Everyone had to wear hard hats so you didn’t bump your head as you went through the low tunnels.
As you went you saw dummies of the original miners doing the different jobs. There was also another underground house and the only underground Post office in the world. The whole mine was so well presented and so informative. Afterwards you could do some “noodling” – looking for opals in the rubble. I was hooked and stayed for ages to be rewarded with some interesting pieces albeit rather small.
After that a quick visit to Charlie the Chinaman from Hong Kong who had the weirdest front yard enticing you to take a photo. As soon as you stop, he comes rushing out and next moment you are in his house looking at his collection of opals. Sorry Charlie – no luck for you this time.

Then up to the lookout to get a view of the town. Not many houses to be seen but you see air pipes and TV aerials and protruding from the top of the hill and a door and windows on the side
.Last of all to the underground revival church and the underground Catholic Church – both very beautiful.
What an interesting day in a fascinating town.

Port Augusta to Coober Pedy

We travelled down to Port Augusta in the rain which was a bit of a shame as the road runs right along one of the mountains in the Flinders Ranges but we couldn’t see it because of the mist and cloud.
We had to go and do some shopping which took up the rest of the afternoon but the rain cleared by the evening and our caravan park looked across the Spencer Gulf to the Flinders Ranges which were bathed in the sunset colours.
The next day we had to buy a new battery for the van and we had a quick look around the town. Port Augusta is a major rail and road centre as it is the link to the west, north and east. Large freight trains seem to pass through all the time. The Port is no longer active as Whyalla has taken over.

There is an amazing Arid Botanical Garden here and it wasn’t far from our caravan park so I rode my bike there. I love riding around as you get to see different parts of the town. I rode through some of the back streets and noticed that not many houses have lawn and not many gardens due to a very short supply and a very low rainfall. The Botanical Gardens were started by one man and then taken over by the council. They have an amazing array of drought resistant plants and the birds and native animals love it and they look out to the ranges. It was so peaceful and interesting. The ride there was quite a bit further than I thought but I really enjoyed it.
The next day was clear and beautiful as we set off for Coober Pedy. The drive out of Pt Augusta was beautiful. There are three large flat top rocks looming out of the flat landscape which is quite green now. After that vegetation varies from flat saltbush (grey) dotted with green (other bushes) and red (soil) which is makes a beautiful contrast, to more bushy plants and a few twisted trees.


We also passed some salt lakes and our free overnight camp was overlooking a very large salt lake known as Lake Hart. The calm water reflected the cloud filled sky. As we walked down to the water’s edge the ground crunches under your feet as it is thick with layers of crystallised salt.
I tasted it and it was very salty. Unfortunately the flies were very bothersome and we were glad we had fly nets. Once the sun went down they went away and we enjoyed our dinner cooked over the fire.


The next day was a long drive to Coober Pedy although it was broken by a visit to Woomera where we viewed some rockets, aeroplanes and the remains of the launching rocket for the first satellite. This was found in the Simpson Desert all smashed up. It seems such a waste . Woomera had a very sterile feel about it as all the buildings were the same.
After that we had 252ks of long straight road and very flat landscape which gradually became hilly as we approached CP and then as we entered CP we saw the landscape give way to mullock heaps as evidence of the mining. We were grateful of the recent rains which have resulted with the whole area being tinged with green.



PS. the first picture is from our caravan park at Pt Augusta. If you look closely you can see the train.

Flinders Ranges

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! I had been told to how beautiful the Flinders Ranges are and it was even better than I expected.
It’s hard to describe how majestic these mountains are and how extensive they are. Wherever you go you seem to be surrounded by mountains. You cannot seem to capture their real beauty on a photo.
We stayed on the edge of Wilpena Pound which is a huge enclosure surrounded by mountains and the early settlers thought it would be a good place to enclose their live stock but they overstocked the area and were so devastated by drought that they had to abandon the enterprise. The whole area became very denuded in a short period of time.
We were able to walk into the Pound and view a shepherd’s hut and a climb up to a lookout and see one wall of the Pound but the only way to get the full extent of the enormity of it is to take a flight over it.
There are lots of huge river gums that line the creek bed near the campsite and pockets of pines are carpeted with green thanks to recent rains.
I have been a bit stuck on this blog and because I’m finding hard to describe adequately the beauty of this place so am going to post this to keep the continuity of the trip and then add to it when I have more time as I have more posts to do so sorry folks.

Peterborough

Peterborough is a town of steam trains. Each road into the town has a model steam train welcoming you and the info centre is an old railway carriage. Outside the info centre is a statue of Bob the railway dog who loved to travel on trains. Whenever he heard the train whistle he would be off and he would often be seen travelling on the trains all over the countryside. He even went down to the Murray and had a ride on a paddle steamer. The train was very important as this town is the centre between Perth, Adelaide and Sydney and it is the only place where you can see the three railway gauges in one place. Now there are only goods trains going through except for the Indian Pacific which is the only train that stops here.

Once again all the buildings are made out of sandstone and outlined with red bricks. There are many beautiful churches and houses.

We saw a fascinating exhibition of miniatures. A lovely couple, whose hobby is making miniatures of old horsedrawn vehicles, are also making an amazing replica of the old railway station which has already been two years in the making. The original building was destroyed and the original stone and timber has been used in the model.
















We spent the night at a free camp 2ks out of Peterborough. It was a cold night and a very chilly wind sprung up the next day.

Morgan to Burra:

Leaving the Murray which makes a right angle turn south towards the sea we headed north to Burra which is about 90ks. The countryside changes from the flat plains covered in small saltbush plants to gradually undulating countryside to gently rolling hills. The thing we noticed was the lack of trees and we weren’t sure whether it was due to clearing or it was natural. The poor animals have no very little shade.
Burra is a very old town where mining for copper took place in the early days. We visited a few relics of the mine and it was interesting to see how they extracted the copper without all of the technology that we use.

We were impressed by all the old stone buildings, churches, houses, in fact most of the buildings in the town were old.
Although the town is only small, there are lots of antique and collectable shops and we enjoyed a coffee where they had an amazing collection of jugs – some in the shape of a toaster!! Old books and lots of other treasure were displayed and tables made out of old sewing machines added to the atmosphere. Sometimes I wish I was a collector!!
We camped at the local showground for $10 per night which included power and hot showers. Bargain!! It overlooked the town and it was very relaxing so I spent Sunday reading, catching up on blog and just doing nothing. Brian spent his time installing a new water pump as our old one sprang a leak. It was quite hard to get it on but of course Brian had fun “fixing things”

Remember if you click on the pictures you can view full screen and get more detail

Waikerie to Morgan:

There are two roads you can travel to Morgan on either side of the Murray river but which ever choice you make you have to cross the river by ferry to get there. We decided to stay on the Waikerie side as we were advised it was more picturesque. As we headed out of town we passed through the hugest citrus orchard I have ever seen. It is the largest citrus growing area in Australia but funnily enough although the trees had plenty of fruit there didn’t seem to be any roadside stalls. Perhaps they weren’t quite ripe yet but most of them looked ready. There are lots of grapes grown in the area as well. The road passed through several small villages and then we had to cross the river at a town called Cadell. The road dipped quite steeply down to the ferry and the caravan scrapped on the bottom. Then when we got to Morgan we found we had to cross back again to get to our free campsite. The ferries run 24hrs and are free.

Our campsite was in Morgan Conservation Park on the banks of the Murray and directly opposite us was some sheer limestone cliffs. What a beautiful spot this was and so peaceful except for the odd passing of a houseboat or tinnie. The birds were plentiful and enjoyed the huge river gum right beside us. We cooked our meal over Brian’s “paint tin.”

Morgan is a very old historic town and was a very busy port in the paddle steamer days as the train met the paddle steamers here. Six trains a day were loaded with goods off the paddle steams and transported to Adelaide. Apparently there were long queues waiting to unload at the huge wharf. There where steam powered cranes to lift the cargo from the top of the wharf to the awaiting train. Imagine the hustle and bustle!!
Morgan is steeped in history with many old buildings and railway memorabilia which included the station, ticket office, station masters residence, old goods carriages and old cranes.
We found the most amazing old shop full of collectables of every kind. What a dream if you were a collecter. We also saw a room full of exquisite large tapestries done by the owner’s mother who only started doing tapestry when she was 77. I have never seen such extensive and fine work.
We stayed the night in the caravan park back across the river as we had to do washing, fill up with water, and have showers!!
In the morning we went to the Museum which was an old warehouse. This museum had some excellent models of the paddle steamers as well as some interesting horse drawn vehicles. Once again the museum is run by local volunteers and the lady that showed us around was very informative about the exhibits. She moved here from Adelaide and absolutely loves it and has such a busy social life. We loved Morgan. It had a really relaxing feel and the old buildings were everywhere.


Brian at work

Renmark to Waikerie

Leaving Renmark we travelled a long distance – 22ks to Berri!! It was time to go to a caravan park to do some washing, fill the water tank and have a shower (after three days). It was nice to have all the lights on and get the internet without having to worry about flattening the battery.
The area we are in now what is called the Riverland and it is follows the Murray along it course. There are lots of small towns dotted all along its winding path and they are short distances apart. I guess in years gone by the settlements were all along the river so they always had water and then the paddle steamers became such a significant industry that the towns grew but now they are all in decline.
The caravan park was right on the riverfront so we were able to explore the town on our bikes with no mishaps!! It was lovely to ride along the riverfront and see all the houseboats.
It was overcast the next day as we headed to Barmera where there is a large lake that you can drive right around. It was raining as we left town but by the time we got to the other side of the lake the sun was shining but it was very windy. We could see where the rain was and as it turned red, we realised it was a dust storm so we were lucky to miss it. We decided to camp by the lake as it was sheltered there and very picturesque. That night the skies cleared, the stars shone but it was very cold. You could see the lights of the town across the lake as well as six others in the distance. Next morning there was a stunning sunrise.
The next morning we went to see The Overland Corner Hotel which was a stop off point for all the “overlanders” – those droving cattle overland to Adelaide and later those travelling to the NSW gold rushes. It also became a staging post for coaches which attracted bushrangers and other undesirables so before too long a police station was built. The pub is now a heritage building and next to it is a large area of Wetlands which is being regenerated. I went on a very interesting Heritage walk where I saw an old limestone quarry. There were shells everywhere – evidence of the being a sea here long ago. Next was an old cemetery with child graves, a bit further on some old copper mines- you could see where the holes were dug. The path climbed up the hill to a lookout overlooking the Murray wetlands and then wandered down to an old ochre mine where the aborigines traded ochre as far afield as the Flinders Ranges. It was such an interesting walk with a diversity of landform. By the time I was back from the walk it was time for the pub to open so we had a quick look around, had a cup of coffee and then headed to Waikerie.
There is a beautiful foreshore at Waikerie as the Lions have been very active in beautifying the area. It is a lovely hilly town and we sat in the sun and had a delicious coffee. After picking up some groceries we headed to our campsite. It was right on the banks of the river with a superb view of big cliffs. We met a local who was going for a walk and we had a very interesting chat about life on the Riverland.

Renmark

Leaving Wentworth, we headed to Renmark which is in S.A. Last night we had a big cook up of all our veggies and ate fruit for breakfast and morning tea as we were entering a fruit fly free zone and they inspect your van at the border.
Renmark is known as the town of roses. There is also a beautiful foreshore lined with green grass, paved footpaths and you see houseboats everywhere. Renmark was a busy port for the paddle steams as were most of the towns on the Murray. At the end of the main street there is an interesting fountain surrounded by a large bed of roses.
We arrived here at lunchtime so after lunch we wandered along the foreshore shore and noticed a strange contraption, which looked like an old house with a tank, a wood stove, a stage and a crooked wooden fence and chooks wandering everywhere, tied up to the shore. On closer inspection it turned out to be Frank the Chook Man who we saw doing a show at the Daly Waters Pub in N.T. on our last trip. I wrote a poem about him last time and read it out at his show. He said he remembered but I doubt if he did.

We made our way to the info centre to find out what was on. We were very lucky to find the paddle steamer PS Industry, which has been lovingly restored by a band of dedicated volunteers, was due to cruise on Sunday so we promptly booked up.
After stocking up on fruit and veggies we headed to our delightful free camp site just out of Renmark on the banks of the Murray River. We had a lovely view of the tree lined banks of the wide river as it slowly, slowly inches it way towards the sea. Behind us was an area of old dead trees which is a result of salinity. We found some wood and Brian used his chainsaw to cut it up so we enjoyed a delicious meal cooked on the open fire which provided us with warmth as well as smoke!!!! (Campsite Plushes Bend: 146 Camps 5) The reflections of all the trees on the glassy river that evening provided a peaceful panorama for our “happy hour. “
The next day we decided to go for a bike ride around Renmark. We drove into town, set up the bikes and guess what!! Brian’s bike had a flat tyre!!! So our riding for the day was cancelled. I was disappointed as I was keen to see all the roses in the gardens around town. We had some lunch by the river and had the best milkshake ever which cheered us up and then we went back to our camp.
We arrived early the next day for our cruise on the PS Industry which is a steam powered paddle boat and she was already belching smoke from its funnel and all the volunteers were busily checking everything, loading wood and all were very excited to be going on their monthly cruise- big boys and their toys!
Finally we boarded and listened to the chuff, chuff ,chuff of the steam engine and the splashing of the rotating paddles reminded of what is would have been like in the early days with lots of these boats crowding the river and vying for business. The river was lovely- we saw a colony of black swans, a koala, lots of houseboats, some high ochre cliffs and an old span bridge on the cruise. On board we watched a demo of a steam powered winch which had wooden roller and the local ladies cooked fresh scones on the wood stove in the galley. All in all in was a great experience.

Wentworth

We spent the day sightseeing around Wentworth. Although it’s a small town there is lots to see. Our first stop was Perry Sands. This is a huge expanse (over 400 acres) of sand hills just 5ks out of Wentworth, where you would think you were in the Sahara Desert. The sand has built up to such an extent it has completely covered the trunk huge gum tree. It was fun to climb up the steep hills. What an amazing phenomenon.
On the way back we stopped at the Folk Museum Pioneer World. This was one of the best museums I have seen for a long time. It has some unusual displays as well as an area where they had life like models of ancient animals like a giant kangaroo, giant goanna and giant wombat. They have found fossils of all these animals in the surrounding area.
Back to the caravan park for lunch and then rode our bikes to a small island which has the Murray flowing on one side and the Darling on the other. It is a wild life reserve – there were some magnificent old river gums here and then the track became narrower as the rushes closed in. At the end of the island you come to convergence of the two rivers.
After that we went to view the weir and Loch 10- one of the many weirs and lochs on the Murray that were put in to control the water levels. The result of this is a constant level in the river which was beneficial for all those using the river for transport, trade and water. However as usually greed prevailed and much too much water has been extracted for irrigation and has resulted in drawing the salt to rise to the surface causing salinity which has caused a lot of the trees to die and the land to become useless. It is an ongoing battle between those who irrigate and those who want to save the river.