I arrived in Coober Pedy with these two Spanish guys that I had met while swimming with the sea lions and sharks and learned that we were all heading in the same direction, so we decided to drive together in case either of us had any car trouble and to also have a little bit of company. We found a place to stay where you can camp underground and by paying for the 1 hour nightly mine tour you got to camp for one night for free. The Spanish guys loaned me a $16 grocery store tent that they had purchased as a backup, and we setup in the underground caves.
We then headed into the city of Coober Pedy to take a look around. It seemed that the stores were worked by the white people and the aboriginal people were mostly standing around outside in the shade watching everyone else go about their day. One aboriginal guy approached us and asked if we had an ID and could buy him some alcohol. He was by no stretch a young man, so I assume that he was on a "Do not sell alcohol to this guy" list of some kind.
We spoke with a couple of locals who were very friendly....very friendly. I don't know what else to say about them other than they were friendly and interesting...
We went back to the campsite and took the Opal mine tour from the campsite operator, who was also very friendly and interesting. The tour guide kept telling these really lame and cheesy jokes, which I found hilarious, but sadly no one else was laughing. The Opal mining process was described as such. You get a license from the city to go prospecting, you then find a piece of unclaimed land and claim it as yours for Opal hunting. You then pay the city money to register your claim and then you have 12 months to start extracting Opal from that piece of land. This is done by drilling holes into the ground, looking for indicators of Opal and then going in with a machine that tears the ground up and puts rock and opal in a massive pile on the surface. These massive piles of rock are then looked through by this person or sometimes other people for Opal.
The area around the city has holes in the ground everywhere and massive piles of rock/dust.
When we went back into town to have "Australia's best pizza" (It wasn't), one of the Spanish guys thought the town reminded him of the Quentin Tarantino film, From Dawn to Dusk, with people secretly being vampires. During the day, people stand around in the shade and at night they sleep in caves and everything just seems strange some how. I can't really explain what was so strange about Coober Pedy, maybe the Spanish guy was right! Check out the rest of my photos HERE
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