Tuesday 17 July – Well we’ve had a very full day today.  I didn’t think there would be so much to see in Coober Pedy!  It was quite a chilly night last night but the van is cosy and warm, so we were fine.  Again we have enjoyed beautiful sunshine, with the temperature I guess in the low 20’s.  After brekky I did a bit of hand washing, then we went for a drive round the town and its surroundings.

After driving down the main street where several parts reminded me of a few park areas in Morwell and Moe where local groups gather, we headed out to check out the golf course, a few kilometres out of town.  It’s an interesting grassless course – just gravel, and apparently is the only golf club in the world that has a reciprocal membership with St Andrews Club in Scotland.

As I mentioned, the entire course is free of grass and golfers are given a piece of turf to take around with them to tee off from each hole. From there we went to the public noodling area and noodled for about three quarters of an hour – but we were out of luck – no opals for us.  After a bit of top up shopping at the IGA supermarket we then followed the sign to boot hill, site of the Coober Pedy Cemetery.  It too has a style of its own, with one grave featuring a beer keg as it’s headstone, on which is written ‘Have a drink on me’., followed by the fellows name Karl Bratz.

Back to the van for lunch, getting in the dry washing, then going to the pickup spot for the afternoon tour which turned out to be most worthwhile.  We visited a mine about twenty kilometres from town, the Breakaways (very unexpected rock formations and colours), Moon Plains, the dog fence, an underground house and a magnificent underground Serbian Orthodox

Church (which to me was anything but orthodox), as well as a very comprehensive tour of the town, which included a sighting of the space ship used in a film called Pitch Black which was made here about nine years ago.  This is a town almost completely devoid of trees, where most of the houses and many businesses, churches, etc are underground, and where the local Aussie rules footy team must travel a 900 km round trip to play its away games.

Back from the tour at a bit before 6pm, we enjoyed a pizza from Yanni’s pizza shop in the Caravan Park.  Tomorrow we hit the road again as we head towards the Centre.