OUR BIG TRIP

MARY & OLI GOING AROUND AUSTRALIA
BIRDSVILLE - COOBER PEDY - Page 5

6 July 2007, Friday

Continuation of the Coober Pedy Story...
I knew I was here before in 1991, but did not remember
that they had to name a Street after me, well must have
done something really important.
We also had a look at the
first underground catholic
church in Coober Pedy.
Quite an interesting place.
And Germans again - ohh
sorry he I guess is allowed
to be here - el Papa - the
Pope.
Well we are in Coober Pedy and what would be the
experience without looking for your own Opal and become
a Millionaire. They have a place marked off for noodling
which is the word for going through the gravel and finding
stuff - hopefully. Well I took it one step further and brought
my little axe and really trying to find the big stone. Besides
Gypsum which is a crystal and lots of dust we did not find
anything. Still it was fun.
We obviously had to do the tour thing and go into an underground home and mine. Lots of Japanese and also some German
tourists. Do not get me started about them, so I better not tell the story about them....
The homes are fun to see. Inside the town district mining is now prohibited, too many children were present and the holes in
the ground were found to be to dangerous. Nowadays it is not called mining but house extension - which is obviously
allowed as along as you stay within your land. One single guy in Coober Pedy has the biggest underground home with 44
bedrooms. Why? Because he found Opal in each extension he did and just continued. I am surprised that he is still waiting
for his wife to be?
The sunset from the Big
Winch lookout is quite
nice, even that the clouds
blocked the real sunset
behind the horizon, yeah
that was the best of the
day actually we bought the
permit to go to the
breakaways in the
afternoon to take pictures
and walk a little. Soon after
lunch th clouds came in
and the sun was gone. So
we changed it for
tomorrow, lets see if we
have better weather
tomorrow. For some
reason we always bring the
bad weather with us in
many places we go. Those
stories would fill a whole
webpage by itself, e.g.
White X-mas in Tasmania,
Cyclone in Palau, etc...