Cooper Pedy

After a not quite so wonderful sleep (than’s to Scarlet) we go up and headed into town for the this morning’s exploration.

Driving around town we found the fire hall.  This one is on display and can you imagine actually using it?

This horse-drawn grader was sent to Cooper Pedy in the 1960’s to maintain local roads.

Ross’s Rocket

The name Cooper Pedy simply means White Man in Hole.  Much like this sign describes.

Today we have chosen to visit the Old Timer Mine Tour

 

Hard Hats Required on this tour.

Dan has the white hat because he thinks he’s in charge.

Supervisor Dan is letting you know where we are.

This was an actual opal mine.  Several people would buy a section of it hoping to strike it rich.

Every morning at 9:30 they turn on the blower, an odd name for the machine that sucks up all the dirt and stones they don’t want.  It does make an awful lot of dust that “blow” out the top.

They used hand tools and explosives to get through the rock and used the same tools to dig out their homes.

The museum here has much more than just mining. Although, we did have a great time crawling around getting dirty.

We finally learned about the solar panels we have been seeing on the road.

The first camel was brought to Australia in 1846.

This movie projector was used up until the screening of Crockadile Dundee (how fitting for this vacation)

There is an actual underground home that was lived in until it was donated.  Apparently, if you were expecting a baby, the neighbors would come over with some explosives and just blast you a new room.

 

There is also a noodling pit where you can look for shards of opal.

The hot dogs are pretty big in this town too.

We are loving the truck stops we find.

Today we visited Glendambo.  Apparently they had 4 straight days of rain and the area resembled that of a lake!  There are still large puddles all over the place. They got 60mm of rain – by any standards, this is a lot of rain and in the outback, this is just simply crazy!

We also got to see some Tanks that were being shipped (Dan and Roland got excited)

Our drive south saw some major changes.  We started to see lakes, both dry and full of water!

The sky and the land just appear endless!

We saw a portion of the road turned into a makeshift emergency landing strip for (I assume) small aircraft.  That is how straight and long this road is.

Lakes looking all dried up.

We finished our drive 536 km later in Port Agusta.  Dark and tired we booked into a caravan park and called it a night.