Alice Springs

Driving from Coober Pedy to Alice Springs and there is not a great deal to see. We stopped in at Kulgara roadhouse to make lunch. We are quite pros at making lunches roadside by now, and in Kulgara we flicked open the kitchen and heated up some leftover spaghetti bol. 

Craig opening up the kitchen as its lunch time!!

roadhouse in the middle of nowhere!

We left Coober Pedy super early so we could make it to Alice in good time. We arrived mid arvo and checked into the Big 4. It was a warm day so the kids changed to bathers and hit the swimming pools complete with a big water slide. The caravan park is a great place to stay with kids. Playground, bouncy pillow, swimming pools and a free pancake breakfast on sundays!!! 

free pancakes, we enjoyed the company of a single lady from melbourne, a couple from Ireland and our neighbours at this park who were so lovely 

The next day Craig went to the Truckers hall of Fame while the kids and I caught up on some school work and put the kids to work in the kitchen! 

Craig's pic from the truck museum

Meanwhile at the camper its dishes time!

We all headed out for the afternoon to the Womens Hall of Fame and the old jail, then the lookout at ANZAC hill.

dry river bed of the todd river 

just to show you that it aint all that pretty. Alice has an ugly side, which is alcoholism, displacement and littering.

Abigail and her my little pony at the lookout 

Matilda was so excited to see Nancy Bird in the Womens hall of fame. I had to ask her who she was. Matilda had read about her in a book, the first female to fly a plane! geez this kid is smarter than me sometimes!

The displays at the Womens Hall of Fame were informative

This kid takes her notebook and pencil to all the tourist spots and makes notes. Such a little scholar! 

The women jail. Abigail said she was 'scared' of the cells. I said well don't be a naughty girl and you won't have to go to prison! 

Waiting for their ice-cream from Mcdonalds!

During our three nights at Alice Springs we were lucky enough to catch up with a friend we met in Dampier, Baz. Was so good to chat with a likeminded traveller and since he has been doing this a long time he has some great tips and stories of life on the road! We also caught up with the folks from Ozzie Wheelchair adventures. A family like us with three kids, so it was good to talk to them about tackling travelling in a camper with little kiddies! We also ran into the couple who had hosted the campsite in Exmouth cape range national park five months back, Mary Lou and Wally. They were on their way back to the east coast.

http://arewethereyettimes3.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/camp-range-national-park.html

Craig bought me a couple of bottles of this. Cute wine and sweet taste but enough of the grey thanks wilbo. 

And Craig happened to see a work ute drive through Alice that looked like his mate. He gave him a call and it was Justin! So we had another unexpected catch up!

Alice Springs has all the mod cons. Woolies, cheap fuel, Macdonalds, etc. It was a good base to do the shopping, fuel up and have an icecream sundae before heading out to Uluru and the last bit of our trip, the great central road.

Thank bejesus for DVD players

Coober Pedy

Its easy to see why so many Sci Fi movies are filmed here as this place is like another world!

Matilda was looking forward to Coober Pedy. She had read about it in her kids travel book that Santa got her for Christmas last year.  A little town in South Australia that is famously known as the ‘Opal capital’ of the world. A place where beautiful Opals are mined from the ground and people live in ‘dugout’ homes as the only way to endure the heat of living here.

As you drive in you are met with hundreds of mounds of soil, evidence of the Opal mining here. In the town itself there are a few tourist shops, a museum, an underground hotel, a small supermarket, 2 service stations and a couple of caravan parks. And that is about it.

 

Although the place is touristy for its uniqueness, it is home to many Opal miners and to a large Indigenous population.

But there is more to this place than meets the eye. Literally. Because only 20% of the town is visible, the other 80% of homes are actually UNDERGROUND!!!! People dig tunnels into the side of hills and live in them. We toured on of these underground homes, a place called ‘Fayes house’ which was dug out by hand by a lady called Faye. She lived in the house several years before selling it to the current owners who now have the place as a home open. For $5 an adult you can wander through their home and have a guided tour with the old man who lives here. Well worth a visit and I must say, this place is rated the 5^th top place in Australia to visit, according to trip Advisor.

 

 

Another popular tourist spot in Coober Pedy was the underground Serbian Church. This place was strange to say the least. It was amazing they had dug out an underground space and turned it into a beautiful church. But to he honest I don’t love going into churches and I was happy to have a quick look then get out!

We also visited the underground Opal museum, this place gave some facts on the town and had a large display of Opals for sale. When we first entered the museum I said to Craig ‘being underground like this is a bit scary isn’t it’. He looked at me and raised his eyes, and I then realised that he couldn’t be scared of being in the museum since he worked for years in an underground mine!

 

Above ground and at the very highest point of town is the Winch lookout. From here you get a 360 look at what you can see of the town. They boasted homemade waffles, but when we went inside the café it looked dark and dingy and very uninviting. So we left and went back to the camper for afternoon tea!

We took a drive out the Oonadatta track to see the Dingo Fence, and from here we drove to a spectacular place called ‘the Breakaways’. It is a 35km round trip from town and is a series of natural rocky outcrops that were formed millions of years ago when Coober Pedy was part of an inland sea. The place is barren, and lonely. But for some reason had a sense of Nostalgia to me. 

Dingo Fence