Coober Pedy

Coober Pedy was our next destination. We had both been looking forward to this, it is another opal mining town, but bigger than Lightning Ridge and White Cliffs. In fact, the mining area of Coober Pedy is quite extensive, and still growing.

The population of Coober Pedy is around 2000, and of those about 80% live partially, or fully, underground in dugouts. The soil here is very sandy, gravelly, and lacking in nutrients. This, combined with the scarcity of water, means that Coober Pedy as very little vegetation. Instead of garden plants the locals decorate their gardens with things that can survive this harsh country (but mostly, things that failed to survive).

We checked out a couple of caravan sites in town, and they all looked pretty basic to say the least. Besides, I had decided months ago that we were going to stay at Tom Cat Hill campground; a bare, exposed campground dug out of the side of a large hill. It was also a pretty basic campground, but what a view!

I’m still having trouble resizing videos, but if you can put up with a bit of rendering, this’ll show you the drive up to our camp.

Now I don’t often mention the weather, unless it’s extreme. It gets hot, cold, wet everywhere so it’s not worth mentioning. But here at Tom CAT Hill, the wind blew to extremes and because of the exposed nature of our campsite and the terrain, we got sandblasted for the three days, this was made worse by a sandstorm on our second day there. I try not to exaggerate too much, but in this instance I don’t have to exaggerate at all.

We don’t often do the usual touristy stuff, but we did visit a few of the underground buildings while we were here. They really were quite interesting and they varied from stylish and functional to downright weird. The buildings are not dug vertically down into the ground, but dug horizontally into the side of the hills. The climate in Coober means that these dugouts are pretty much the optimum way to live. Blistering heat in the summer, cold temps during winter and that dust storm that we experienced is a common thing here.

I think the highlight of Coober Pedy was the Breakaways. This is a series of lowish hill formations that we could see from Tom CAT Hill, and I nearly said, Ahh let’s not bother. But I didn’t and I’m so pleased we did go. The landscape is quite extraordinary, with the Breakaways seeming to pop up out of the otherwise flat landscape, and we spent a good four hours exploring the area.

We were both especially impressed with the “Brown Dog, White Dog” formations, we couldn’t see the “dogs” but were impressed by the formations and the stark colour difference.

Coober Pedy was an interesting place to visit, and we’re pleased we ticked it off our list, but the phrase – Been there done that. – inferring no need to revisit, sits well with us.

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!