Day 110

Day 110 – Coober Pedy

Having scouted Coober Pedy yesterday and narrowed down a possible Opal ring to 3, at 2 different

Going down mine

Maureen Divining Opal

shops, we decided we would do a tour of one of the mines. Tom’s mine is a working mine on the outskirts of town and we had spoken to some others at the camp kitchen last night and they recommended it to us. As it turned out, the two other couples we had me last night, Ian & Katherine and Barbara & Glenda were also going out there so we all went together. We were going to unload the Beast and try that on the tour, but we got there right on 10am and thought we might miss it. It retrospect we could have done it and the tour guide would have loved it, but next time. We gathered below ground and had a

1m Mine shaft

New shaft diggers

brief talk about opal mining in town. As the tour went on, Ben, our tour guide went through all the ins and outs of opal mining and explained most of our questions.

Miners can only have one claim and that claim is only 50m xx 100m. This was done to stop big miners from coming in and buying up the whole area, I am not so sure that was a totally good thing. By having small miners only, there are a lot of things they get away with, like not having to backfill and rehabilitate the

Mine supervisor

Vacuum tube takes dirt to top

ground, hence all the mounds of dirt and holes everywhere. The way they develop a site is that they drill holes over it looking for particular structures or best of all samples of opal that get dug up. The structure they are looking for is horizontal cracks. It seems the area is made up of sandstone and as it cracks they usually get vertical cracks, but sometimes they get horizontal cracks and this is where they find opal. One way they do this apart from drilling is divining for it. They have 2 brass rods you hold in each hand, and just like water divining you walk along and they widen out

Old way with pick or Hammer drill

Mine shafts dug with digger

indicating a horizontal crack, they do not know why, it just does. Maureen gave it a crack and she was perfect, so maybe we will move out here! Once they divine, then they drill small holes to look at the soil and then they dig a big hole 1m in diameter and they lower someone down to look. If they like it they then start tunnelling. Small groups do this by hand and explosives, bigger ones dig a huge shaft and lower a digging machine down, and away they go.

The tour was excellent and we would recommend it to anyone, you certainly go away knowing more about the mining process, but it is certainly not a life for me.

Back on the surface, we drove through town looking for the touristy stuff. On the way we looked into

Faye's Bedroom

Faye's bar

another opal shop and narrowed it down to 3 rings in another shop! We went to Faye’s place. Faye was one of the areas characters and had moved out here in the 60’s as a cook at the hotel, she did not last long there because she was sacked for not cooking the green meat (off meat) and was going to leave when the locals banded together and helped her set up her own café. She looked around for accommodation and found this location where the postie used to house his truck and took it on and dug out her own home.

Faye's pick

View of town

It was done be her and her friend by hand and is a testament to hard work. The guide said that you can dig your own home out of the rock with no restrictions apart from you cannot mine in the residential area but he knows of one home that has 4 people in it and 40 bedrooms! Faye was a real entrepreneur and founded a number of businesses and had a mine too.

After Faye’s we went to some of the churches who have dug into the rocks and went to the Big

Underground Church

Underground accommodation

Winch Lookout. On the way up the hill there is a sign saying best views here! So we drove in. no sooner had Maureen got out to take some great pictures of town, but a little Chinese guy rushed out and said she had to come look at his shop. Feeling obliged, she went in but was soon out and running for the car for a quick getaway. We went the extra 50m up the hill to the official Big Winch Lookout, but it is shut down! The view really shows the outbackness of the town, main street bitumenised but all the others just

Underground cafe

Underground church

graded. Back down we went and back to the last opal shop.

Maureen had narrowed it down to these last couple and had chosen her final ring and we are now the proud owners of an opal ring. We went back to camp and went over to the camp kitchen to have drinks with the others and show off the new family member. Tomorrow we are off to Woomera.

Drive in

View from edge of town

 

Underground church

Outside church

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner with Barb, Glenda, me, Ian & Katherine