We're offSept 25 Sydney (Beahces)Sept 26 Sydney (walking tour)Sept 27 Flight to Brisbane28Sept SPACESHIPSept 29th KillarneySept 30th Killarney to Glen Innes1Oct Glenn Inns to Warren2Oct Warren to White Cliffs3Oct White Cliffs to Broken Hill4Oct Broken Hill to Flinders Rangers5Oct – Flinders RangersOct 6 – Flinders to Port Augusta7 Oct - Port Augusta to Coober Pedy7Oct - What have we learnt so far…7Oct - Next up8 Oct – Coober Pedy to Mt Ebenezer9 Oct Mt Ebenezer to Yulara10 Oct Ayers Rock to Alice Springs11 Oct Alice Springs to Tennant Creek.12 Oct Tennant Creek to CloncurryOct 13 Cloncurry to Karumba14 Oct Karumba to Ravenshoe15 Oct Ravenshoe to Yungaburra16 Oct Yungaburra to Cairns (Palm Cove)17 Oct Palm Cove to Port Douglas18 Oct Port Douglas to Newell Beach19 Oct Newell Beach to CairnsOct 20 Cairns to Bingal Bay (Mission Beach)Oct 21 Bingal Bay (Mission Beach)Oct 22 Bingal Bay (Mission Beach)Oct 23 Bingal Bay - InghamOct 24 Ingham - Home HillOct 25 Home Hill to ProserpineOct 26 Proserpine to RockhamptonOct 27 Rockhampton to 1770Oct 28 1770Oct 29 1770 to Bundaburg (Burnett Heads)Oct 30 Burnett Heads – Tin Can BayOct 31 TinCan Bay to Rainbow beachNov 1 Rainbow beach to CaloundraNov 2 Caloundra to Main armNov 3 Main arm to Byron BayNov 4 Byron Bay to WooliNov 5 WooliNov 6 Wolli to BerrimaBerrima to Eltham (Melbourne)Nov 8 - 22 Eltham (Melbourne)nov 23 Eltham to Ballaratnov 24 Ballarat to Mt GambierNov 25 Mt Gambier to PortlandNov 26 Portland to Port CampbellNov 27 Port Campbell to LorneNov 28 Lorne to JanJucNov 29 Jan Juc to CoolendinaDec 3 Coolendina to Ryenov 30 to Dec 2 Surf Coast
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Location
Coober Pedy, Australia
So after the long and tedious task of updating the blog we bid farewell to the waterfront and set off towards the centAH. It would be first of many uneventful drives through the CentAH. We saw a bunch of dried up salt water lakes which were cool. It’s crazy to think that the climate is such that an entire body of water can disappear during the dry season only to reappear during the wet season.
Coober Pedy, another quirky Opal Mining Town surrounded by a lunar landscape, was our recommended stop for the night. It’s one of the last bits of civilization where you can get decent drinking water and relatively cheap gas. The mines here still produce a fare amount of Opal and are much more technologically advanced than White Cliffs using tunnelling machines to excavate the earth leaving an almost perfectly square shell which, of course bods little or no character when compared to the hand dug mines/homes in White Cliffs.
We settled into our spot at Ribba’s Caravan Park. We were pumped to find out that the showers were free! Water is scarce in the Outback and most places charge about 2$ for 4mins of water YIKES! After filling us in on local attractions and Must See’s, the owner helped us figure out what freaking time it was. In Queensland we had to “spring ahead” by 1h. Now, in South Australia, we’ve changed time zones so back ½h. She warned us that in the Northern Territories they don’t “spring ahead” so we would have to readjust our clocks AGAIN!
We grabbed our things and headed to the kitchen area which is becoming a major selling point when choosing a Park. Not only to you get free cooking fuel, running water and a sink to do your dishes it’s a great place to meet other travelers. Here we met Francois and Alexandra from France, Kate from Melbourn who was traveling with Andy from France and Peter and Susan from South Africa.
We had a great time chitchatting about our travels so far and upcoming itineraries and exchanged highlight and lowlights over some local wine, beer and porto. We had a blast with “les Français de France” laughing at each others accents and expressions. Andy was practically impossible to understand, especially once the cheap wine started to kick in! He would replace words and entire sentences with sounds… “T’sé c’est comme boff bon la la boff.” You get the idea… Andy was giving Kate a lift which is basically new age hitchhiking. They met on some kind of forum were people can look for rides or offer rides, it’s quite common here.
We got to talking about the long distances and how we pass the time. I mentioned that Marc-André and I had listened to the same 500Mb of music about 20 times (it would appear that a clear radio station is scarcer than the water supply!) Kate was kind enough to share her 70Gb of music with us in what I like to call old school peer to peer file sharing.
We had a night cap in an underground camping area and I was happy we never got around to watching Wolf Creek, an Australian movie based on a real like cereal killer who hunted tourists.
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