Amazing Landscape - Coober Pedy

Australia Map | Home Page 2 of 2 | Page Up

Anyone for Golf?

Not surprisingly golf is different here, it is usually played with glow in the dark balls at night, to avoid the heat of the day.  There is no grass, players tee off from a few square feet of synthetic turf which they carry with them.   The 'greens' are patches of oiled sand.  There is one great advantage to membership, Coober Pedy is the only club in the world to have reciprocal rights at the home of golf, The Royal and Ancient St. Andrews Golf Club in Scotland.   I wonder how many miners have taken them up on this generous offer?

Coober Pedy Cemetery

Many Coober Pedyans take their eccentricity to the grave and their 'Boot Hill' is on every tour itinerary for good reason

Carl Bratz even made his own headstone

Opal Fields

Heading out of town to a positively lunar landscape of open unfenced and often abandoned mine shafts and pyramids of non opal bearing earth as far as the eye could see.  We were amazed that we could just walk onto the mine field with only this sign to act as a deterrent.  It is also advised not to run or walk backwards

    Unwary trespassing tourists could end up 40' to 60' further downunder than they ever intended    

Gordon our mine of information (pun intended) told us it takes two or three men to work a claim, there are no big mining companies operating on the Coober Pedy opal fields.  Of the 500 or so  miners currently (2006) working, less than a dozen were under fifty years of age.  The life is hard and sons no longer follow fathers down the mine, most had seen them go bankrupt at least once and made a beeline for 'civilization' as soon as they were old enough

For almost 40 years the land had been excluded from mining because of its cultural significance to local indigenous groups.   Due to a world shortage the ancestral owners decided to sign a new agreement to reopen the opal fields

 

In 2017 hundreds of hopeful opal miners descended on Coober Pedy hoping to be lucky in a ballot to allow them to mine on land at the Shell Patch Reserve 35km north of town, 221 miners were registered

The Breakaways

Land of the Antakirinja Mutuntajarra            

 

  
 
 
 
   

 

Kangaroos in general have adapted well to desert conditions, their bodies are 70% water, 10% more than us

They also have cast iron kidneys and a different network of sweat glands for cooling down in the intense heat

In the Breakaways, Euro Roos live in caves in the rock and can survive for weeks without any water, just as well really if they want to do their surviving in Coober Pedy where they average 5" of rain per year

The Dog Fence

The longest fence in the world stretching 5000 + km across 3 Australian states where men and sheep are a little less nervous because it's there

It separates cattle country from sheep country hopefully keeping the dogs, foxes and dingoes away from vulnerable sheep.  They also bury poisoned bait to keep down the population, it will kill the canines but other indigenous wildlife is immune to the poison used

Our really great afternoon ended at the Desert Sands hotel for a complimentary pre-dinner drink, the perfect end to a wonderfully interesting day
Australia Map | Home Page 2 of 2 | Page Up