Day 70 / 2014 - Port Augusta to Coober Pedy

Currently we are in Coober Pedy just waiting on the Mail run tour scheduled for Monday the 14th. We were suppose to have been on the tour Monday the 10th but the downpour on Tuesday put a halt to that where Coober Pedy had a years  rainfall of 115mm in 1 day. The main street was under water and we had a river flowing past our caravan.

We had left Port Augusta on the 2nd of April. we only went back to Port Augusta because we had to register our vote for the Senate election and were waiting on our postal votes to arrive. We had planned to free camp untill then but found out the temperature had been forecasted to reach 38 degrees and though aircondtioning would be a better choice. Once voting was out the way we did  some shopping then next morning headed off north up the Stuart Hwy our first stop being Woomera. We called in at Spuds roadhouse to have lunch and had heard it was a free camping spot as well. If Woomera didn't have anything we could go back to Spuds and camp the night as it was only 6KM away. Spuds is at the turn off from the Stuart Hwy onto the Pimba Rd which was the main access for Woomera and Roxyby Downs which was next on our list of destinations.

Woomera is the governments missle and bomb test range with most of the areas are prohibited from public access. They have opened the town where there are 2 Heritage Museums and what they call a missle park displaying some of the rockets tested there during the 50's, 60's and 70's. It was also used during the NASA space program in the 60's to help track Gemini and Mecury missions. Most of the town is deserted and has only about 400 people left. It has also been used for other purposes such as Detention centre for illegal imigrants. The detention centre is now closed but they still use Woomera as part of the defence forces long term test and evaluation strategy.

From Woomera we went onto Roxy Downs some 83km further down the road. Roxby is the support town for BHP's Olympic Dam mining operation of Uranium, Copper, Gold and Silver. We booked into the caravan park then went into the main steet to check out the Tourist Bureau for things to see and do. A mine tour is run once per week which happened to be the next day so we booked in for that then looked at some of the services available. The town is small but has about 4,500 people. It seems to have all the amenities such as a shopping centre with a woolworths, Mitre 10 ect... as well as a public pool and club.

To finish off the Day we travelled the 30Km to Andamooka which is a Opal mining town similar to Coober Pedy. The brocure had said Andamooka is a frontier town and is a place you go when you don't want to be "found". At least it had tar seal all the way. Ariving in town we discovered there is no real town planing with mining and homes co-existing with each other as aposed to Coober Pedy where mining is banned in the town area (too many people falling down holes). There we a few shops and some heritage buildings to look at such as the mud huts miners use to live. It was raining so we problebly didn't look to hard for sights to look at but at least we could say we had been there.

The next day the rain has stopped as we boarded the bus for our tour. Olympic Dam is currently an undergound mine so from the surface there wasn't a lot to see but the tour guide did run through a lot of the process to give us an idea of life working underground. We then went onto the processing plant which is rather large. All I can remember the were lots and lots of pipes going in all directions with a smattering of settling ponds and waste heaps no doubt this meaned something to someone. We wern't able to get off the bus at any stage but we did end up close enough to see them pouring molten copper to make up the anodes used to make copper sheeting. Olympic Dam is unique in the way it process all its precious minerals on the same site it mines from. They are able to do this as the expected life of the mine is 70 Years.

The next day we left Roxby Downs and headed back towards Woomera and Pimba. We arrived back at Spuds at 12pm and stopped for lunch. We then decided we might as well stay the night as we weren't expected in Coober Pedy fro another 5 days. Free Camp site are a great way to save money it is also a great place to meet other travellers as people seem to socialise more easly when at a free camp. I guess when there is no TV or internet so you need to do something to ocupy your time. Besides word of mouth is a great sorce of information such as where to stay or where to buy the cheep fuel from.

Next day we left Pimba and headed for Coober Pedy. The landscape is amazing in that it is flat without trees for miles this looks more like the Nullarbor than the Nullarbor. About Halfway to Coober Pedy we found a rest stop called Bon Bon where we decided we would stop for the night. There was nothing there to speek of except a toilet and a few tables and chairs under a free standing patio. There was a water tank but it had a warning of not to use the cntents for drinking. Our longest stint for free camping days in a row was 3. Anne had set a challenge of 4 consecutive days so we decided to stop here for a couple of nights. We ended up staying 3 nights making it 4 days in a row when you include Pimba's Free camp spot on the first night. 

It is amazing the characters you meet when you stop in one place. Bon Bon was a busy area as it had a toilet so you would get a lot of travellers stopping briefly during the day to go to the toilet and by about 4pm the travellers who were stopping for the night would pull in. The rest area had an emergency phone as well if required. A mother and daughter travelling in a car pull in and came up to us asking if they new how far the next service was travelling south we said about 80km. They only had enough petrol to go another 30km and asked if we had any spare. Unfortunately we only use diesel and couldn't help them. They decided to use the emergency phone to call the RAC and had to wait for assistance to arrive. Anne went and had a chat with them and found out they had gone through Coober Pedy without stopping for fuel they had a bad expeience there on the way up and didn't want to stop thinking there was something further along. $250.00 later for the callout and 20 litres of petrol and they were on there way. The flies at Bon Bon was also the most friendliest we had met. We tried al sorts of deterent. They seen to drink Aerogard and Anne found some success with Tea Tree oil but in the end we resorted to the dorky but effective head nets. People must have though we were mad or wimps until they got out of there own cars.

After 3 Days at Bon Bon we headed into Coober Pedy. It had just started to rain so it was proberbly good we were going now. The day was forecasted to be cloudy which would lmit how much solar we could use to recharge the battery possibly leaving us without power if we stayed another day.

We arrived Coober Pedy and booked into the Stuart Range Caravan Park which seemed to be about the best. They had this great low cost bus tour and a pizza resuraunt on site which you got 10% off the pizza if you took their tour. We had to have Pizza at least once and it was delicious and filling. We were booked to go on the Mail run tour on the 10th which goes from Coober Pedy to William Creek, Oodnadata and back to Coober Pedy visiting the famous pink roadhouse and a number of cattle station in between. Unfortunatly the Heavens opened up dropping more than a years rain in one day and effectively closing all the gravel roads in the area so now we are waiting for the 14th to see if the roads will be re-opened.