Day 99 - Friday 12th April 2024

Today marked the start of my cross country odyssey across the middle of Australia; just a gentle start with a five and a half hour drive from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy, the opal mining town famous for its subterranean houses.

Up with the alarm this morning, and I was packed and ready to depart at 07:30, so I did. I filled with fuel in the next door service station, and was on my way. When I turned off onto the Stuart Highway, I was told to stay on the same road for 539 kilometres. It was this moment that bought home to me the distance I had to travel today, while bearing in mind that the distance gets bigger tomorrow!

I'd followed a couple of long vehicles onto the Stuart Highway, and one of them turned off after a couple of kilometres, but once I was past the other I set cruise control to 110 and settled in for the run. The trees suddenly seemed to stop, and I was well and truly into the outback by the time I stopped at Spuds Roadhouse at 09:15 for a comfort break.

Back onto the road, and I stopped at an inland lagoon lookout for a view of a salt lake in the distance. 

Then onwards once more with just one other stop before arriving at Coober Pedy at 13:00. It was strange to me just how empty the road was; for the majority of the trip I was totally alone on my side of the road with the occasional vehicle or road train travelling in the other direction.

On arrival in Coober Pedy, I first stopped at the 'Welcome to Coober Pedy' sign, and from there it was only 2 minutes to my accommodation; I was able to check in nice and early which game me options for the rest of the afternoon .... I decided to go to Tom's Opal Mine for a tour.

This was an excellent tour, lead by an opal miner who was able to provide an insight into how he mines for opals, from how he finds the seam in the first place to where he does and doesn't bother to look. Opals are silicates that have washed out of limestone and into cracks left by faulting; the colours are created by the molecules settling out in planes that refract the light. This happens when the silicates dry out slowly to give them a chance to settle; if they dry too quickly it leaves a worthless rock called 'poch'.

We toured the mine, and had the fault lines pointed out to us; the opal tends to be found in front of a fault rather than behind. At Coober Pedy there are apparently three levels to the seam; he thinks the top two levels aren't worth mining, but the bottom one is where you find the value. However, there is a lot of luck involved. He told a story about finding the seam and deciding to give up as he hadn't found any opal. Having slept on it, he decided to give it one more day, and on the very first cut 2 inches further into the rock face found the deposit. If he hadn't had a change of heart it'd have remained undiscovered, and if he'd mined six feet one way or the other he's have totally missed it.

Away from the mine, and I found somewhere for my dinner before returning to the room to catch up on blogs and vlog; I hadn't been able to access the hotel wifi in Port Augusta, so had yesterdays blog to publish before hitting todays!

Tomorrow will be another early start; I have a seven and a half hour, 733 kilometre (455) mile drive to Uluru tomorrow! I know my first stop tomorrow will be at Marla, but need to do some planning this evening around other stops, and the need to refuel en route.