There is a bug going around the group and, on top of a cough and sore throat, I have an upset stomach. I had to get to go to use the drop dunnies a couple of times in the night, and I got feasted on by mosquitoes, which is bad enough when your trousers are not around your ankles. The second time I put on some deet, but this doesn’t deter the flies.
Coober Pedy is a monument to its past as an opal mining town, the first discoveries dating from 1915. Nowadays its main still somewhat low key industry is tourism, and there are a number of underground mine museums, hotels and even homes. I discover some abandoned cave rooms where walls have been put on the front, though the doors and windows have been removed. They now look like they are being used by the local homeless with ripped out back car seats for bedding. Coober Pedy’s atmosphere is like an American old west town, though its history is even shorter than most of those.
As I walk along the main street, I pass a group of Aboriginals sitting on benches, and one of the women starts shouting at a passing Aboriginal man using some shockingly ripe language accusing him of doing something or other to her sister. The man just laughs, saying ‘I don’t even know you’. I saw a similar thing in Katherine, which we quickly stopped at a few days ago. There, a woman called a passing man a ‘skinny, f****** c***’. He not unreasonably pointed out that his physique was somewhat healthier than hers. It has to be said that the Aboriginals that sit around towns getting drunk from morning onwards, and it is a common site in outback Oz, don’t contribute much to racial relations.
It’s more long stints of driving today, but after Coober Pedy we stop at Woomera, a town with an outdoor display of old rockets, war planes, long range guns and other bits of military detritus. There is no explanation of their presence, but this town was founded as a military base, and nearby is a one-time nuclear test site.
On the road, we pass a number of roadside graves, solitary headstones being a not uncommon sight on the Darwin to Adelaide Road.
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| underground hotel room |
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| Coober Pedy junk art |
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| Woomera Playground |
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