Week Three and a half:  Coober Pedy/Uluru/King's Canyon

Like Las Vegas, Coober Pedy just appears out of the desert; and while there you are bombarded with signs enticing you to ‘stay here’ or ‘do this tour’ or ‘come and see our display’.  It certainly does not have the lights and music of the Vegas strip, but you feel as if you are seeing a miniature Vegas in its infancy.  There is even the local indigenous population to add to the culture of the area, just as in Vegas. Whilst in Coober Pedy, we did enjoy doing the touristy thing:  we checked out an underground shop or two, toured Faye’s underground house – mostly created by Faye and two friends on weekends; as you do!  It is an awesome achievement.  The Old Timer’s Mine was also very interesting.   We saw how opal miners dug and crawled in order to find those elusive opals and it really helped us to appreciate the opal even more. I will admit to feeling slightly claustrophobic as we walked around the old mine.  Apparently around 80% of people in Coober Pedy live underground – and who can blame them, it is a lovely constant temperature of around 24 degrees Celsius underground…and as our host who guided us around Faye’s underground house said – you want a cupboard or shelf:  dig one out!  We had a look around the Serbian church – beyond the front door you walk down into a beautiful church – all dug underground!  Complete with arched ceilings, statues and stained glass windows.  Another amazing achievement.   As I was reminded by the lass at the van park reception – we were in the middle of the desert…so an interesting challenge for us at Coober Pedy was paying 20cents for a 3 minute shower…you could add another 20 cents if the water stopped, but who wants to hop out wet and put more money in?  Well, I will tell you that we all must waste a lot of time in the shower at home, because Tony and I were both able to fit everything in, under the 3 minutes!  Food for thought…

Charlie atop some mining equipment. 
Note the ex-movie prop in the background!

Faye decided she would like a pool, so she dug one out of the rock!

Faye's living room

Dining room

This is us preparing to go underground at the old timer's mine. 
Hand held self portrait so apologies for the blurriness!

How's this for a bath!  No need to worry about cleaning the walls!

The underground Serbian church.



  In the afternoon, we drove out to a national park area called ‘The Breakaways’, so named because the rocks have ‘broken away’ from each other.  This is an area of important cultural significance for the local Aboriginal groups, and you can imagine the stories being passed on from generation to generation.  I think it’s great that we can come along and appreciate the beauty of the area as well.  Tony, naturally, was extremely excited about the photographic opportunities… the thrill of chasing that ‘perfect shot’.  We saw another man there with a beautiful panoramic camera, he looked like a professional.  We were a bit jealous!  Matthew has particularly embraced becoming Daddy’s photography off-sider – it is so wonderful to see! 

After Coober Pedy, it was really still two days travel to Uluru.  We decided to stop at a free camp just over the Northern Territory border, near Kulgera.  This was pretty much a bitumen car park and a pit toilet.  My sensibilities can only handle free camping for one night (the power is not a problem – it’s the saving the water and not showering that I dislike), but we have always found the free camping to be quite enjoyable.  It is a convivial atmosphere and you get to meet some lovely people:  like Mal and Laurice, who were next to us that night, and then our neighbours again at Uluru; Sue and Peter, who were our neighbours at Port Augusta, then Kulgera, and then we caught up with them again at Uluru.  It was Sue and Peter that helped me search for Matthew when he ran off at the sunset viewing area at Uluru.  Sue, that calmed me down after we found him.  That was how we met our guardian angel Tracey, who noticed Matt on his own and brought him back up the line of people until she found his parents.  We owe Tracey a great debt: bringing our boisterous, larger than life, at times infuriating but also hilarious and smart Matthew back to us; and finally Deb and Jeff, who were our neighbours at Spud’s back at Woomera and then down a few caravans at Uluru.  It is nice to build up a network of friendly, familiar faces; to trade travel notes and caravanning tips with and to relax and have a few drinks with.  If you are reading this, friends: we salute you and thank you for the immense richness you have added to our travels. 

Our free camp at Kulgera.  Yep, it's a car park!

Uluru is worth every minute of the driving.  We spent three nights there, and enjoyed 3 beautiful sunsets and many beautiful walks around Uluru and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas).  Uluru is an immense, spiritual place.  It is amazing to consider such beauty and know that Mother Nature/The Dreamtime Spirits/God has created such a thing.  Whatever you choose to believe about how it came to be, it’s stunning beauty hits you smack in the face as soon as you get close to it.  I will let the photos speak for themselves:

My favourite photo.

 Feeling quite exhausted from our busy physical and social days at Uluru, we gathered up once more and drove 3 and a half hours to King’s Canyon.  It was not long after we got there, that we began to feel very relaxed.  Beautiful Tracey was here with her family, we knew we had the afternoon to relax and that tomorrow would be enough time to complete the walks.  Another factor contributing to the feeling of relaxation was NO mobile or internet reception!!  (one of the reasons for the late blog post).  It really does help you to relax being cut off from the outside world; I find it makes it easier for me to be in the present, to enjoy the space where I am at…but it is really hard for me to do unless forced upon me…but maybe I will try to do this a bit more often from now on!  Try, anyway J

Tony woke early Tuesday morning and walked around the rim of King’s Canyon.  He took his tripod and found some shots to take, so he was happy with that.  Here are 3 of the photos he took:

In the afternoon we all did the King’s creek walk, an easy 1 hour and not dangerous at all, unlike the rim walk.  Of course, it took us a bit longer as the boys like to stop and investigate what they find.  Matthew is especially good at striking up conversation with passers-by (he was at his finest on the Mala walk at Uluru, they had gone ahead and the people coming back up the path were saying, ‘Oh, this must be Matthew’s brother, oh yes, Matthew is down that way…Matt and the little dog, Patchy…’ and so forth.  Hilarious, yet slightly embarrassingJ). 

So we had a lovely balance, at King’s Canyon, of physical endeavour and relaxation.  We caught up with our new friends, Laurice and Mal, Deb and Jeff; and made a whole new set in Pam and Graham, Laurie and Sue and their dancing friends:  the boys were especially adored; Laurice and Mal spoiled them with yummies, and Pam was so kind to share her home cooked goodies with us.  It has inspired me to bake a chocolate cake here in Alice Springs, which I am enjoying the delicious aroma of right now!

It was quite a big drive from King’s Canyon to Alice Springs, hampered somewhat by the incredible pain I had been in since Sunday which seemed to be increasing…pain in my right side especially when I breathed in, coughed (which I was STILL doing, after 4 weeks) or heaven forbid sneezed.  Every time I had to turn around to the boys in the back (which is frequently) I was grimacing in pain.  So once settled in, I headed to an afterhours GP clinic and had Mum’s Sunday night over Skype diagnosis of pleurisy confirmed.  Now that I am on appropriate medication things are improving quickly and I sincerely hope that this is the end of any more ill health on this trip!!!

We are in Alice Springs until Monday, after which we will make the journey up to Darwin, via Kakadu. We have had amazing weather so far, although the real cold is about to start...apparently going to zero degrees tonight! Once we leave Alice we have 27 days to get to Broome, to make our booking at Cable Beach.  It all seems to be working out quite well, fingers crossed. 

I hope you enjoy the photos, the feedback is certainly positive.  Below, we are privileged to feature some of Tony’s  photos taken on the Nikon…the iPhone just couldn’t do the Olgas any justice, I’m afraid.  Don’t forget to check out Patchy’s page, he gets around that cheeky puppy!