A Trip Through The Opal Fields
We can expect to see many different and for most of you, unusual types of wild life along this section of our trip. There will of course be many varieties of kangaroos and their smaller cousins the wallabies. There will be emus which can probably run as fast as this bus if not faster and there will be many varieties of snakes and lizards . Among the lizards you can expect to see the bizarre looking Thorny Devils which as their name suggest are covered in mean looking spikes. You will also see perentie. These lizards are a member of the goanna family (kind of like a komodo dragon!) they can grow to over 6.5 feet in length, and believe me if I come across one during the next toilet stop I will break all land speed records!
Coober Pedy is 600 miles or 960 kilometers north west of Adelaide (the capital of South Australia). It has a population of around 2,500. It supplies a large part of the world's opal and the first opals were discovered here in 1915. It is Australia's largest and oldest opal mining town and is known the world over for the unique lifestyle of its inhabitants. To escape the heat and dust of this town all the residents live in underground houses known as dugouts. Most were originally opal mines. Even the churches, shops, restaurants and hotels are in dugouts.
Coober Pedy is a very cosmopolitan town with miners coming from all over the world in hopes of striking it rich! Coober Pedy can also be a dangerous place and is not somewhere you wander alone at night. The danger does not come from the inhabitants but rather from the hundreds of untended holes that have been dug by generations of miners in their quests for opals. It is very easy for the unwary to simply fall down one of these abandoned holes never to be seen again! The name Coober Pedy comes from an aboriginal word meaning "hole in the ground" or as the local aboriginals refer to it "white feller's burrows"!! Temperatures here often exceed 104F or 40C for most of the year.
This is where we stop this month, the next
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