Day 4 – Coober Pedy continued
We spent the first half of our day in Coober Pedy walking around the town and inspecting all the Opal in the shops. There is some very nice Jewelry here. After lunch we went on the Redeka Coober Pedy Tour that takes you out onto the opal mines and to some local tourist spots. Our first stop was the Underground Church and town cemetery. We also stopped at the local Golf course, no grass to be seen.
We then went out onto the Opal Fields for a talk on the various ways in which Opal is mined. The methods used included digging shafts, of which there are millions amongst the various fields, and then tunneling underground following any seams of opal you might find, and another method is the open cut, where a digger is used to dig out massive amounts of the ground, which is then fed through a noodling machine, equips with a UV light which fluoresces the opal making it easy for the operator to find.
The last stop for the day before a return trip along the Oodnadatta track was the Dog Fence. The dog fence is a fence installed to keep dingos out of fertile lands and extends over 5000km.
Day 5 – Coober Pedy to Uluru
This was one of our longest drives, however the view at the end of the day was well worth it. We stayed at the Uluru camp grounds in Yulara and if we climbed the hill behind the camp we could see both the Olgas and Uluru.
We went straight out that night to view the Uluru sunset, along with hundreds of others.
Day 6 – Uluru and the Olgas
Today we went out to “climb” the rock, not fully appreciating what this was to mean. We arrived to the base of Uluru to be shocked fist at the number of people actually climbing it, and secondly how hard this climb was going to be.
We decided to walk around the base first, and spent about an hour doing this. Each corner held a new vista and something to discover.
We did decide to do some of the climb but only went as far as the start of the chain. Coming down was more of a challenge than going up.
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