Noodling through the mullock

So Coober Pedy proved to be as advertised: a mining town in the middle of the outback desert, where people live mostly in old mine shafts and there is little to do but fossick, or if you are of lesser means, noodle through the mullock. These are respective forms of opal mining.

Now when I first heard about this place, years ago, it represented more like a fantasy, the farthest most remote, absurd, and harshest outpost of humanity on earth. And I thought boy, I'd like to go there some time. Fast forward a few years and I have already been to Antarctica, and I wind up in Coober Pedy. They have a tourist information center and pizzia joint now, and tourists such as myself actually show up. But after you wander through a few underground buisnesses, look at some opal, and noodle through the mullock yourself (I didn't have the faintest idea what I was looking for), there ain't alot else to see. It is still a harsh, and poor, mining camp at the ass end of no where, where water is nearly as dear as the rocks they mine. But it was worth a visit, because the place I slept that night was 20 feet underground in a huge old mine shaft and really quite cool.

From there it was Uluru, Ayer's Rock. Now all the pictures are mostly the same side, from a distance and you think, yeah, it's a big rock alright. But when you get closer, and go around it, you realize it is more than a big rock. It is a really really big rock and the prominent feature of an otherwise flat desert all around. It supports differant micro climates, and it has many faces that you don't see from the post card shot.

Now in my last post, I mentioned it was about 2000 km of long flat road through the outback until you hit the far side ocean. Well, since naturally I didn't think that was long enough, I decided to to take the long way back, turning east at Tenant Creek to add an additional 900 miles or so of outback highway. Actually it is because flights from Darwin are so dang expensive and I can get home cheaper from Townsville. So giant saltwater croc's will have to wait, I'm headed for the Great Barrier Reef.