Coober Pedy

Sorry for the radio silence but we have been in the bush with no signal for several days so I am only now catching up. Here is the next post.

The town of Coober Pedy was not established until 1915 when opal was accidentally discovered by 14 year old Willie Hutchison who stumbled on a bunch of them while he was wandering around the camp. Willie’s dad had taken Willie and a camel train to the area on a 700 km trek from Adelaide looking for gold. The town now supplies most of the worlds gem quality opals, and it is estimated that only some 10% of the opals have been mined so far. The landscape is pockmarked with hundreds of mines and there are warning signs like this everywhere.

We spent a leisurely day in the town, looking at opals, having a beer and then looking at some more opals. There is not much to do unless you are into noodling. This is the popular local entertainment of sifting through piles of rock looking for opals. We didn’t do any noodling, it was too hot and I estimated the success rate to be unworthy of the investment required! We did buy a small one though which was very colourful!

Jules has been looking out for ‘Big Things’ along our route and so was very excited to find the Big Winch, which is located on a pile of dirt just outside the town centre. However it did seem a bit neglected, you might notice that the sign that says ‘Coming in 2017’ has not been updated for 2 years and the car park was deserted. We also found an underground chapel and an underground bar.