Salt Lake

Outside Coober Pedy

Stuart Highway

19/5/2012  -  Up early again this morning and left Pimba about 8.30am.  The land is still very barren with no trees.  We stopped at a lookout to take some photos of one of the huge salt lakes out here.  I had dropped my glasses when I got out and didn't realise until I went to write in my diary as we left the lookout.  Thankfully I did that or I would never have known what had happened to them.  So lucky too as we could have run over them on our way out.  After about 20 kilometres from Pimba there were trees and huge dry salt lakes.  One of the lakes called Island Lagoon had chunks of salt sticking up out of it.  We called in through Glendambo to check out the price of fuel at both their servos and it was $1.71 at the BP and $1.70 at Shell.  There was a sign on the way into town to say the population of the area was 22,000 Sheep, 2 Million Flies and I didn't catch how many people but I don't think there would have been many.  We stopped at Bon Bon Rest Area for Moko and I think most of those flies were there having Moko with us.  Just after there was a section of the highway that was signed for use as the Royal Flying Doctors Airstrip in an emergency.  It was nice and wide with no guide posts and a turn around section at the end for the plane to turn.  When we got to about 80 kilometres out of Coober Pedy we started to see Opal Mines or remnants of some on either side of the road.  The town itself is a bit hilly with underground houses located in the hills around the town.  The main street has lots of Opal Traders/Jewellers, a supermarket, chemist, bottle shop and post office, a few restaurants and take aways.  We checked out all the caravan parks and decided on the Opal Inn which was right behind the pub and motel.  It was $30 for a site but no water.  None of the parks here have water to hook up to.  We parked up, had lunch and went for a walk down town.  We went into an underground museum which wound around into an Opal shop with lots of lovely jewellery.  The salesman there explained to us what the different types of opal were.  The museum we first walked into had been dug by 3 women back in the early years.  When we got back we had neighbours that we discovered were from Tin Can Bay and later that afternoon a van pulled in across from us and it was Jeff and Anna Aird.  Jeff  has the cleaning contract at Tarong.  We booked a guided tour for tomorrow to have a better look around the area so that should be good.