Coober Pedy and Erldunda

We decided upon a bus tour for the afternoons entertainment today. Whilst awaiting pick up Zoe and Brielle found a couple of stones with opal through them in the playground, an unexpected surprise. The bus tour was excellent and we all learnt a heap.

We visited the golf course which is rated in the top ten most unique golf courses in the world. It has blacks (not greens) that have the sand mixed with sump oil to stop it blowing away, you scrape yourself a pathway between the hole and your ball before putting. There are synthetic tees like at driving ranges and the player carries a patch of it with them for using on the fairways.

We were told about the process for testing ground, staking your claims and mining your area. Apparently CP is the only area that miners don't have to back fill their shafts. They tried to make this law at one stage but realized that there was so many shafts already not back filled that it was going to be impossible to police it.

"The Breakaways" is one of the must see features of the area and are really impressive. They are named this as the Aboriginals say they appear to have broken away from the rest of the land, is was like the land around them had dropped and they had stayed up.

We also got shown the dog fence, an underground mine and house and finally one of the underground churches in town. The girls really enjoyed the afternoon and it managed to entertain them for 6 hours no problem.

Look at what years of mining has done to this blokes ankles.

The night was spent in an underground two bedroom apartment which was really worth doing. The internal temperature remains fairly constant throughout the year between 20 and 25 degrees even though outside can go from zero to 40. With an obvious lack of windows it was absolute darkness when the lights go out, you couldn't tell if your eyes were open or shut! Also the silence was eerie due to the 1.5mtr thick walls.

Got up early to take some pics of the sunrise, you can see the house vents and TV anntenas that pop up out of the hills.

Finally we stopped at the public "noodling" area to do some......noodling (fossiking for opals). We kind of expected to find a bit due to the brief success we had yesterday in the playground. The next hour was spent with me digging and having no idea what I was looking for and the kids running up and sliding down all of the mounds, no fortunes were made.

We got up to Erldunda just after lunch and had a relaxing afternoon at the playground and making red mud pies.