NT Rally - Day 5 - Coober Pedy

Date: Wednesday 26th April 2017

By Officer Hardass

Today I sprung out of bed and got ready for a bus tour around town. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect other than being told it was awesome. After a quick breaky it was off to the entrance of the motel to wait for the bus. When the bus pulled up I was pretty impressed by how tough it was. I was really hoping we would get this sucker bogged!

First stop was the old opal mine. This place was incredible. I can only imagine how hard the men worked by digging the mines by hand with pick axes. I walked out of here covered in dust from brushing up against the walls!

Next up was an aboriginal art gallery with some really cook stuff. Learned a lot about the local indigenous people.

After the art gallery it was on to Fay's underground house. Fay was an incredible woman who ran a few businesses around the town as well as her own opal mine. I walked into her house and though damn she must be short as the roof was very low. Turns out that was the case! She couldn't reach any higher to pick the ceiling! It was amazing walking through this house as it was all dug out by hand. Must have taken forever.

From Fay's we headed a little out of town to the underground Serbian orthodox church. Now, I love old churches and this thing didn't disappoint. It wasn't dug out by hand but the engineering in how it was dug out was incredible.

From the church we made a run out of town to check out the dog fence. This fence is several thousand kilometres long and keeps the wild dogs on one side and the sheep on the other. I'm told the dogs like to kill the sheep for sport and can decimate a pack pretty quickly. The scenery out here is incredibly flat and baron. Just as our guide was saying we couldn't see the Breakaways as the road was closed he received a call from his wife saying the road literally just opened and asked the group if we would like to go, which of course, was a resounding yes.

On our way out to the Breakaways I got chatting to this lovely Kiwi lady out on tour with a few of her friends. She had been a teacher for most of her life. We had a great conversation about "who was her most troublesome student". Her friends kept pestering me that she was single so I made her my cougar girlfriend for the bus trip. The road out to the Breakaways was pretty rugged—I now realised why the bus was so tough! A normal 4x4 would struggle over some of the washed out road but this thing just ate it up!

Arriving on top of the Breakaways was absolutely incredible. I literally stood in awe at the landscape. It started to make sense how the aboriginal people had such vivid dream time stories about how all the landscape came to be. I saw a little plaque a few hundred metres away and thought I would go check it out. Seems a little European backpacker also had the same idea so we had a good chat along the way. Turns out her name's Sabrina, from Switzerland, and she's been away for 4 months. She'd been through a few Asian countries and was spending her last couple months travelling around Australia. It was amazing all the places she had been. Her trip sounded incredible. For me, it was great just to speak with a really lovely girl. This was the last stop on our tour so the bus headed back to our motel.

Getting off the bus a new batch of hoggies were about to get on and they saw me chatting with a very obvious, European backpacker so they were all yelling "get her number" and "he's single, you're cute, get his number". Very, very embarrassing for me and I think her English was good enough to know exactly what they were saying as I caught her blush a little. I said goodbye and hope to see you in Alice, and left it at that.

The afternoon snacks were put on by the LOH girls and damn they were good. We also had a big fry up for dinner and a few beers to go along with it. It was damn near a perfect day. Tomorrow we head for Alice Springs and I can't wait.