Camping underground?!!

Trip Start Sep 12, 2006
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Trip End Sep 11, 2007


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Flag of Australia  ,
Friday, December 1, 2006

On Friday we drove to Coober Pedy, the strangest place in the world! The town is famous for its opal mining but it is so hot here that 65% of the towns population lives underground. Lots of films have been made here like Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert so you can imagine what it was like.

Our car was unbelievably hot... but when you get out of the car its even hotter. You just cant escape so we could understand why they chose to live underground. We stayed at the underground campsite which was a new experience for the both of us! You walk down underground and there were corridors, rooms and camping spots carved out. There were light switches on the walls and we didn't even need to peg our tent down. We would have been a little scared down there on our own but an young Australian couple Annie and Evlyn turned up and we felt a lot safer.

The campsite owners gave us a free nights camping if we did their mine tour which was really good, we were even shown how to find opal using brass rods, I think this is typically used for finding water but it also works for opal... and it really works because we all had a go and it totally baffled  us!  As we came out of the cave after the tour we saw the most amazing sunset, but the otherside of it was a thunder and lightning storm... it was incredible! That evening we sat in our cave and had drinks with Annie and Evlyn and their pet baby turtle! It was so cute. We couldn't believe how lucky we were to be in this unusual town.
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