March - Coober Pedy and Outback South Australia

I was surprised to find that Coober Pedy had grown since my last visit 30 ish years ago. The Stuart Highway is now sealed all the way and the town only has a few gravel roads this time, more motels and tourist parks as well as two supermarkets! The tourist trade has flourished as more people are now travelling through to/from Alice Springs and Darwin. Many people still live in ‘dugouts’ or underground houses as the temperature is at a constant 24C no matter what it’s like outside. It was 41C when we were there and it gets even hotter in mid summer!

  

Given the nature of the landscape, many films have been shot here including Mad Max III Beyond the Thunderdome, Pitch Black (the ‘landing craft’ is still there)

  

And our favourite, Priscilla Queen of the desert (at The Breakaways)

There is also the Dog Fence that stretches 5,600km from the Great Australian Bight in SA to the Darling Downs in south eastern Queensland and is twice as long as the Great Wall of China. It has proved very successful in keeping dingos out of sheep country which is south of the fence, north being cattle (and dingo) country.

We also visited Woomera, established in 1947 as a site for the launching of British experimental rockets. The Defence Department did operate a communication facility and testing range which is still a prohibited area. NASA also operated a Deep Space Tracking station here between 1960 and 1972.

On the way back down, we ‘popped’ in to see friends (Lyndal and Denys) at Roxby Downs, 450kms away. We were hoping to do the tour of the Olympic Dam Mine, but we were the only ones booked on the tour and they needed 8. As both Lyndal and Denys work at the mine, they took us for a drive around the outside and showed us some of the plant and told us about some of the operations. The mine is still underground but there are plans to expand it to open-cut, which will eventually make it the biggest hole in the world! (L&D - thanks again for a great evening)

Thirty kilometres from Roxby Downs is the historic opal mining town of Andamooka. It’s much smaller (and nicer) than Coober Pedy. We visited some of the historical cottages – these are only semi-dugout unlike Coober Pedy which are all underground.

It was then back down to the Eyre Peninsula, home of the largest commercial fishing fleet in the Southern Hemisphere,

And some free camping by the beach, and to try our hands at fishing once more before we head back across the Nullabor to WA.