20/5/2012 - It is a beautiful morning today. We woke nice and snug after being able to have the electric blanket on whenever we wanted last night. Had bacon and eggs for breakfast. What a treat. I did a load of washing and we had a chat with the neighbours. The Airds came and said goodbye. It was just lovely sitting out in the sun. We went down and filled the car up at the Shell Depot in the back street. It was $1.66 a litre so the cheapest in town. The other servos are $1.69. We came back and had lunch, I did a bit more on the blog and we got organised to do the tour. We went around to the office at about 2.30 and the guide picked us up at about 3pm. There was about 10 from the caravan park on the tour. We started off visiting the Desert Cave Opal Shop and the guide told us all about opals and how they are formed, the types and how to tell a good one. It was really interesting and there was some beautiful jewellery there and I might say expensive. After that we visited the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum. They had an opal shop there too with some lovely things. We then went underground to see where 2 miners in the early days had made a 2 room with entry dug out and how long it took them to make it. Then we went into a more modern underground home. The living room was really big, designed for entertaining, it had a small kitchen and then a couple of bedrooms. On the way out of town we saw the entrances to some of the homes that are under ground dugouts. The soil in the Coober Pedy hillside is stable enough to allow huge ceiling spans in rooms and it is not unusual for a mining family to buy an adjoining property and tunnel to link two dwellings or even three or four. Some mansion style homes spread up to 450 square metres underground. The diggings was the next stop where there are large piles of dirt and holes where the miners have been digging or are still mining. After that we went out to the Breakaways, a series of large hills in all shapes, sizes and colours. We were there around sunset so the light was great to take photos. Then we stopped at the dog fence that is about 5, 500 kilometres long and was erected to try and stop the dingoes from the north entering into the south. The underground Serbian Church was the next stop. It was lovely with beautiful large shaped ceilings and wonderful accoustics and a series of 3 sculptures that were sculpted into the sandstone walls. The guide took us back and we had a drink in the only underground bar in Australia. It also had the only underground gaming room. When we'd finished he dropped us all back at the caravan park. It was well worth taking the tour. We had tea and I thought I'd catch up with today's blog just incase we don't have service for a few days.
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