Coober Pedy

Was a long, dull old drive to Coober Pedy and the desert was getting more and more arid as we drove in. Coober Pedy in one of the hottest places in Oz and is very inhospitable land. It's hot and dry and with very little greenery. People settled here as there are opal fields galore. On the drive in we saw mound after mound of earth dug up for opal mining. We found an underground motel room to stay in run by a greek family. There are many nationalites in this little town as people came from all over the world to mine for opal. The majority of people live in underground dugouts, necessary to escape the heat. 2 weeks before we arrived it had been in the late 40's!! We spent 2 nights here and went on a bus tour of the area. We were told all about the mining and how hit and miss it is, it's created plenty of millionnaires but a lot of people only just manage to scrape a living. We had a go at 'noodling' which is sifting through the earth looking for bits of opal. Only managed to find a few bits of 'potch' (worthless opal) though. We visited this fellas place too. Crocodile Harry is a tourist attraction in himself!! Now 83, he lives in a huge dugout (that he dugout by hand!) which is decorated with all manner of parafanalia, bizarre bits of 'art', photos of his adventures as a young man and the like. He was a bit of a ladies man in his time and there are bits of underwear hanging from the ceiling signed by various visiting ladies, I didn't offer any of mine, I've only got 4 pairs of pants, can't spare any, plus they're all looking a bit raggy now!! Anyway, he's called crocodile harry as he used to hunt crocodiles before he came to Coober Pedy.

Many films have been made in Coober Pedy (Mad Max, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Pitch Black) and there are various set pieces scattered around the town including a crashed spaceship from Pitch Black! It's amazing that people live as it's so baron, but they make every effort to be just like every other town, they just have to do things a bit differently! They have a golf course but there's no grass on it! They had to colour the earth with oil to make the putting 'greens'!

It was an odd place but I liked it and the way people have adapted their lifestyles to suit the harsh conditions.

Alice Springs & Uluru

Alice Springs was a much bigger town than I'd expected. We stayed for 3 nights, longer than we'd planned but our first day there was Paddy's day and of course we had to go out for a Guinness or 2! We ended up in this saloon style bar which was really cool, they had an enormous barrel full of monkey nuts and the floor was covered in monkey nut shells, we made the most of the free nuts of course and made a mighty fine pile of shells on the floor!

We did have a good look at Alice, not a bad little town. We visited the Alice Springs desert park where we learned all about the desert and how the aboriginal people survive in the desert and were told some very interesting aboriginal stories about how the land was formed (very different to what the scientists say!), these stories they pass down through generations and between tribes and they are very important. My favourite story was the one about Ayers Rock (Uluru is the Aboriginal name). I might not remember all the details completely but here goes:

The way the land was formed is all about celestial beings. There were 7 sisters (the Pliadies to us) who had 2 sons (can't remember name). Now, these sisters were constantly pursued by a magic man (can't remember his aboriginal name, but he is Orion) who was trying to seduce them. They were forever running away from him. One time when the 7 sisters were resting they sent the 2 boys off to play, and, as boys do, they built mud pies. The 7 sisters then spotted the magic man approaching and fled, taking the boys with them. The boys had made one mud pie (Uluru) but failed to complete the second one (Mount Conner). So there you go, Uluru is the mud pie made by a celestial boy!!

After Alice Springs we set off of Uluru (stopping off en-route to look at some meteorite craters) which is about 500 km away. It was sunday night and we wanted to watch the Grand Prix so decided to get a cabin with a tv instead of camping, even though we knew it would be expensive. When we arrived though I couldn't believe how expensive! There is a complex built especially for visitors to the Uluru national park and if you want to see it at sunrise / sunset then you have to stay over pretty close by. Jees, what a tourist trap. You've no choice really as the nearest 'cheap' roadhouse is around 80 kms away. So anyway, we pulled into the cheapest place there ($150 for a cabin!!!!!) and they were fully booked....bugger, so we went to the next cheapest, Rich was told $149 but when I went to pay, they said $165 so after a bit of discussion they said they'd honour the $149. Result (even though it was stupidly expensive. We've paid between $50 - $70 cabins previously and this didn't even have a bathroom or cooking facilites!!!) When we got to our room, the tv only picked up one channel, not the one we wanted for the GP.....so Rich went and had a chat with them and explained the only reason we got a cabin was so we could watch the GP that night, the manager upgraded us to a $300 ensuite hotel room with no extra charge......Result!!! So, even though we'd spent 3 times as much as we normally would on a cabin it felt like we were getting our money's worth with the very nice plush hotel room we had!

Anyway, we drove to the national park and parked up to watch the sunset over Uluru with a couple of stubbies! Now, I've always wanted to see it but Rich wasn't really that arsed "it's just a big rock in the middle of the desert innit!" But he changed his tune when he saw it. Was amazing, huge and quite awesome. Apparantly only 2/3 of it is underground. We sat and watched for an hour or so and took more pictures than Ruth does on a night out!!!! Was really very pretty but we didn't see much redness. After that we went back to our pad and had a few beers with Graham, an english biker type we met at the sunset viewing. After that we settled in to watch the Grand Prix.

Next day we (well, I, rich stayed up all night!!) got up early to catch Uluru at sunrise. There were thousands of people there (well, seemed like that many!) and again, we watched for an hour or so and took loads more photos. We checked out the cultural centre and were planning to walk around the base (10km) before it got too hot. But as Rich had had no sleep (and was still a bit pissed!) he was in no fit state and had go kip in the car. 3 hours later when he woke up, we did a shorter walk along the base as was too hot to do the whole lot. After that we had a quick look at the Olgas (another rock formation) then left Uluru destination Coober Pedy, stopping for the night at a campsite that was home to 4 billion flies!

Northern Territory

After leaving Kununurra, we crossed over the border to the Northern Territory and lost an hour and a half!

We pretty much spent 3 days driving. We stopped at Katherine for the night and Tennant Creek for the night too. It's been a lot of driving (which Rich does, he won't let me as he's a crap passenger and will fall asleep. So while driving I read Magazines out and we do crosswords to keep us both from being bored!) Driving around Oz is an adventure in itself. Not least because of the distances, the (sometimes dull) scenery and the odd little towns, but because the amount and range of wild life. It's unreal!! We've seen the usaul kangaroos (alive and squished) and emu's, but also wild cows, dingoes, Goannas (a type of lizard), wallabys, a huge buffalo of some sort, massive eagles and the best one....a donkey!! All just hanging out on the road or by the side.

Between Tenant Creek and Alice Springs we made a few little stops. One was at 'devils marbles' which is a load of very large round rocks balanced on each other, formed by fast cooling volcanic explosions. Next was a place called Wycliffe Well, which we passed and then had to turn around to go back and look at! It's the alien spotting capital of Australia, they had a big alien theme going on at this roadhouse and inside the walls were covered with all manner of alien sightings and parafanalia, was highly amusing!

Later on as we'd stopped for petrol, we were just pulling out and Rich's window was open a bit. All of a sudden he jumped and leant right away from the window, I looked and there was the biggest spider sat on the edge of the window, half in, half out. Rich pulled over and set about trying to get rid of it. Man it was big. If I'd have been driving I would've jumped into the passenger seat and probably crashed. Maybe it's good that I don't drive! Anyway, I consulted my book of spiders and it was a type of Wolf Spider, can be dangerous if provoked but not deadly! Even so, it gave us both a fright, check out the picture he was enormous!!

So, after all that excitement we arrive at Alice Springs.

The Rest of Western Australia

By the time we left Broome it was 10th March. We have to be back in Melbourne for the 29th as we have tickets for the Grand Prix so the next couple of weeks are going to be a bit hectic with a lot of driving! After Broome we stop at Derby for a night in a very seedy motel, next day we check out the large Boab tree there which was once used as a rest place for prisoners en-route to jail, it was indeed a very large tree! Our next destination was Halls Creek where we were hoping to get a tour to see the Wolf Creek Meteorite crater. (Incidentally, Wolf Creek is also the name of a recent Aussie film, apparantly banned in the UK, as it tells the true story of english backpackers who are brutally murdered by some crazed local. We've heard mixed stories, some say he's in jail, some say he's not been caught and is still on the loose, tampering with peoples cars at Fitzroy Crossing and then being on the road to 'help' the unsuspecing travellers when they break down. Now, we haven't seen the film yet as I didn't want to watch it until we'd got past that part of Oz, which we have now so nobody need worry that we'll be murdered!!!).

So, on the way to Halls Creek we stop at Fitzroy Crossing to grab a cheeky half at the oldest pub in the Kimberley Region. However, when we arrive at said pub, there are loads of Native Australians hanging around, all pissed up (it was only about 2pm) . We're used to seeing them in the small towns sat in the parks and under trees, some of them drinking. But here there were about 20 or 30 little groups of them, a bit scary considering we were the only white people there and they were or seemed to be quite drunk and there were a few arguments going off here and there. So, we walk through the groups to get to the pub, when one group call us over, we go over and have a chat and they are very friendly and one guy kept calling Rich 'Retch' as he couldn't say Rich, apparently. We make our excuses and reach the pub only to find it closed! Bugger. Bizarrely, all around the outside of the pub (where the little groups are congregated) are signs saying 'no drinking in this area'. Accross the road is a park with a sign saying 'drinking permitted in this area', but it was empty!

So a few hours of driving later we arrive at Halls Creek and to the visitors centre to see if we can visit the crater anytime soon, but no, it's shut and won't be open for another couple of days! Bugger again. We can't afford the time to hang around in Halls Creek, nor would we want to with potentially a crazed murderer on the loose and the fact that Halls Creek is a teeny tiney little town with nothing to do there. So we ploughed on through to Kununurra and arrived quite late in the evening. Total distance covered today: 930 kms. Pretty Impressive huh?!

We spent 3 nights in Kununurra which was a very nice little town. We took a tour on the lake which was nice and we saw plenty of crocs (Freshwater ones though, they're only small and won't attack you, not unless you did something stupid to annoy them) and loads of colonies of flying foxes, these were cool, all hanging upside down on the trees overhanging the river!! We also visited the national park there to see the 'mini Bungles' (rock formations). We visited a distillery (the only one in WA) called the 'Hoochery' where we tasted some liquers and rums and Rich had a go on their whisky which apparantly was like moonshine!!

After Kununurra we were making a bee-line for Alice Springs, only stopping along to way to sleep, and maybe a few photos here and there