As it turns out today was possibly even more windy than yesterday and as the temperature wasn't as high we really noticed the wind chill on the bikes and although the distance was relatively short, the wind made it seem like forever.
The first stop was cadney homestead where it was nice and cosey and with our bottomless cups of tea, it would have been quite easy to stay there, out of the wind, for some time. However, after a change to warmer gloves and the donning of buffs, we were back into it. The wind was so strong that we were riding well and truly leaning to the right while try to stop our heads being pulled off. At one stage i noticed that even going around a left hand bend, we were still leaning to the right.
me out the front of cadney homestead
Sadly the landscape offered little in the way of protection as there was very little landscape. It was very big, very flat and very, very open. We stopped at a rest stop, which offered little more other than 2 rubbish bins and a small amount of shade, to take photos of the nothingness. Then it was off again for the final push to coober pedy.
two blokes, two bikes and bugger all else
About 40km out of coober pedy the mines start and so does the weird landscape. It looks like a sea of giant, sand coloured ant hills and there are signs everywhere warning of the dangers of falling down shafts or getting blown up.
the weird anthills outside coober pedy
We found where we were staying, across the road from one of the few working drive-ins that i know of, but had to wait for our unit to be cleaned. Apparently there had been a dust storm here yesterday and things were dirtier than usual. Once in, we changed an toddled off for a look around. Coober pedy really is a one product town, other than pubs and supermarkets, pretty much everything else has to do with opal. It's also very interesting in that a geat deal of the 3000 people that live here, live underground, so when you look at the place from a high vantage point, you only see parts of houses, the rest is buried.
After lunch it was time to do the tourist thing so we went to an old mine that had an old underground house attached. The mine was opened in 1916 when a 15 year old boy found opal while chasing a goanna down a hole. He sadly died when he was 20 and when you see how they had to work, it's suprising he made it that long. All the shafts were dug by hand and they were very narrow and very low and when they found opal it as painstakingly gouged out and that often meant that the shaft was only just big enough to wriggle through. Not ajob for claustaphobes.
me with my new found mate, marty the miner
The houses on the other hand, were quite spacious by comparison and if you needed an extra room, all you had to do was grab the pick. They were also really interesting because of the great colours everywhere and the textures of the walls and ceilings.
Then it wasoff to one of the high points in town to watch the sunset an to take photos of the big winch.
big man, big bucket
sunset coober pedy style
Tomorrow we are off to woomera which we are both very excited about, wal because he's never been there and he has a keen interest in things aeronautical, me because i used to live there and it holds many, many fond memories and possibly a few ghosts, we'll see.
our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-29.0046,134.7556&ll=-29.0046,134.7556&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1