Somewhere during the night the wind eased and it started
raining instead. When we woke up the sky was grey and it was still raining a
bit. We prepared breakfast in the camp kitchen (an open shed) and took it
slowly. We chatted a bit with another traveler and the farmer after which we
hit the road again.
Completely unaware what would happen next we enjoyed the
first part of the journey. We were looking forward to get to Coober Pedy and
explore the town. The drive was about 140 km on an unsealed road of which the first
80 km were perfectly fine, although we collected a bit of mud in our wheel arches
(read 5+ cm).
While driving, we noticed that another car had driven ahead
of us as the tire tracks were clearly visible. At some point we noticed that
this one track had turned into three tracks. This could only mean that somebody
in the opposite direction must have made a u-turn… Very soon we found out why.
The last 35 km were horrific!!! The road had turned into a
giant slide. It was like driving on green soap. There was no grip and we
quickly understood the road must have been closed because of the weather.
Normally a sign will tell you at both ends if this is the case but because we
had camped overnight somewhere halfway along the track we didn't know.
Well I can assure you it wasn't fun at all and if we had
known this we would have stayed where we were. But there was no turning back at
this point (we didn't want to get stuck and had to keep on driving). Km after km we slided towards Coober Pedy and were relieved to made it to bitumen
eventually.
From there it was only 3 km to Coober Pedy and the first
stop was the car wash. We forgot to take pictures of the car but it looked
nasty. We had people driving up to us to ask where we had been!
After getting most of the dirt off we picked a campsite
(Oasis Tourist Park) and booked for the night. We spent the rest of the evening
cleaning our car, doing washing, getting clean ourselves, getting in touch with
the family and sorting our photos.
The next morning we decided to book for another night to
give us some time to relax J.
We had a late breakfast and explored the town. Coober Pedy is an Opal mining
town where half of the inhabitants live underground to escape the heat
experienced during summer. It sure is a very special town!
We walked around for a bit
and had a look inside The Old Timers Mine, an old opal mine open to public. Besides
the mine it also houses a museum and an underground house from the 80's. It
really shows how the miners worked and lived in the early days.
Other local attractions that we visited were a church,
backpackers, hotel, all completely or partially underground. In the evening we
visited an orphanage for kangaroos where we were able to hand feed wounded and
orphaned kangaroos. Too cute!
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