Alice to Adelaide Day 4

Day 4 and this time we got to have a lie on, only a 6am start.



Max drove us around Coober Pedy to show us the mines, underground churches and the only house in the town which had a lawned fence. (The owner could afford the $900 a year water cost as she had gotten lucky in the opal mines). Max then drove us out to the desert to show us the Dingo fence (which is over 5300km long and goes through South Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales). The scenery was like being on Mars and in fact a few films were made there including Pitch Black, Red Planet and Mad Max, there was more evidence of this in the town itself as we saw props that had been used in the films.
After some more sightseeing Max gave us a chance to have a go at “noodling” for opals. He took us to a place where the first mines deposited their soil and as they didn’t value the milky opal as much to begin with, this allowed people to try and find their fortunes. To begin with we found nothing but then Adam found a small piece of opal, and then another and another.
We then set off again to make our way to Port Augusta.



Along the way we stopped at a pub to see the last 30 seconds of the Melbourne cup, where the “Midlanders” (Adam, Nadene and myself) won the sweepstake as our horse called Viewed came first and so we won a bottle of champagne to share. We had a quick stop for lunch at a local park in Woomera which is also the Australia Defence Force’s development and test site for rockets, Adam was in his element as we looked around some of the rockets that had been developed there.



After that we carried on down to Quorn where we would be staying for 2 nights. Quorn was a little village situated north of Adelaide, on the edge of the Flindes Range. We would be staying in “The Mill” which had recently been bought by Adventure tours Australia, the company we were travelling with. The Mill was lovely, it had a massive kitchen, large dining room and lounge with a tv and dvd player – luxury! In the evening we had a vegetarian lasagne. Whilst eating in the dining room the caretaker introduced himself. Rosco was in his 60’s and seemed quite witty. He found out it was Nadene’s birthday and said he would go home and bring back some special cookies for us. A few minutes later he arrived with a plate full which we devoured. After dinner Adam, Kris and Nadene joined Rosco down the pub and the rest of us chilled out in the lounge watching tv.