To Broome and Back!: Day 17. Bus tour of Coober Pedy 28/05/2015

We had heavy rain during the night which had eased by morning to just light showers. It was fine by the time we boarded the bus for our guided tour of Coober Pedy. The driver today was Yani who happens to be the owner of the caravan park, who had worked in the Opal mines before buying the park so he was a wealth of information.
Our first stop was at the local Aussie Rules football ground that has beautiful green grass that costs a fortune to maintain because of the scarcity of water in Coober Pedy. In stark contrast the 18 hole golf course is just rock and gravel with black sand "greens" that have been made by mixing oil with sand so that the sand will not be blown away when the wind blows strongly from time to time.
We then drove to an area where there has been extensive mining and we were able to see the shafts that are 120 ft deep and are still exposed so we were unable to get out of the bus.
Half the residents of Coober Pedy live underground to escape the searing heat of summer. The underground houses remain a constant temperature of 24 degrees in summer and winter. Yani pointed out a number of houses by the presence of air vents visible above in the rock face. There a number of churches underground and we toured the Serbian Church. Attached to the church is a community hall that can seat 300 people.
Our next stop was the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum. It is a Multi Award Winning Underground Complex and we viewed an award winning documentary "The Story of the Opal" which was very interesting and informative. We then toured the underground mine and saw how the miners lived and worked. We saw a line of Opal that was in its natural state for tourists to view and we found that very exciting. There is also a special display of Fossils from the South Australian Museum and a large display of exclusive Opal jewellery. We resisted the urge to buy an Opal as the one we particularly liked was $9000 !
We also saw an area in town that is available for tourists to go "noodling" That is searching for pieces of opal in the mounds of dirt.
We found the landscape quite ugly and we have never seen so much scrap iron (old machines, cars etc) just laying around in yards.

The population of Coober Pedy at its peak was 5000 but now is down to 1500 , the Aboriginals numbering about 500. They do not live underground but in a "reserve" that has been set aside for them.
Our stay here at the Big 4 Stuart Range Outback Resort has been wonderful because of the excellent sites and the wonderful amenities including very pretty garden surrounds in such an arid area.
Tomorrow we start our journey to Uluru.