13 November 2011 - Big4 Oasis Coober Pedy, South Australia

Another sizzling afternoon in the middle of the desert and we are hidden away inside our caravan as the rest of the inhabitants in Coober Pedy, in their underground dwellings.

Last night, Saturday night in Coober Pedy, passed relatively peacefully. We stayed in as per usual, were pleased to catch Doc Martin on the box, and heard only in the distance, the loud calls and cries of the drunken aboriginals as they made their way home at some late hour.

Yesterday morning up town after ten o’clock, the locals were sitting about in the shade or wandering about still under the influence from the night before, most accompanied by a pack of relatively friendly dogs, and speaking, or calling loudly, in their native tongue. Chris and I wonder why they all speak so loudly, so harshly and unpleasantly; is it that they have all suffered glue ear in their youth and are now hard of hearing? They are an important part of the population here, keeping the many police occupied and adding colour to the otherwise drab and desolate streets.

We also noted with sorrow the contrast between the aboriginal people photographed in the 1970s as part of a committee for some community effort, well dressed  (if one can look back at 1970’s clothes with positive nostalgia), holding themselves with pride and altogether bright and intelligent looking, and those sitting about idle in the street today. Time has not improved the lot of the locals.

The Serbian Orthodox Church

We were up bright and early this morning and on tour at 8.30 am with Rudy, the tour driver, with just one other couple. We were taken all around the town; places of interest, industry and everyday living pointed out to us, en route. Our first stop was the Serbian Orthodox Church, a very beautiful place of worship hewn out of the sandstone, further enhanced by carvings apparently done by a New Zealander. The Church is now mainly a tourist attraction, and used only for baptisms, weddings and the occasional monthly mass when the Serbian Orthodox priest comes up from Adelaide. There is a request for a $5 donation at the door, which was included in the cost of our tour, and I imagine that the upkeep of the place together with the rates is well and truly covered by donations from curious tourists such as ourselves. This church is one of the four underground churches in the town and far more spectacular than the modest Catholic one we investigated yesterday. We did pass the Anglican one this morning where the Sunday service was obviously in full swing.

We were taken to the public noodling field, an area within the town boundary that is the only place where mining or fossicking is allowed. Elsewhere only miners with permits may dig or sift for opals. The area we visited this morning is covered by discarded piles of material, where it is possible to find opals the bulldozer operators missed. We spent five minutes poking about and our fellow passenger produced a poor sample, without value except for the fact she did find it herself. Chris is keen for us to return here to do some fossicking on our own, uninterrupted by tour drivers or time constraints. At this point in time, we are planning to set our alarm, yet again, and set off early tomorrow morning before the intense heat descends.

The golf course

The golf course was another of our destinations; a course affiliated with St Andrews in Scotland but lacking the greens and water hazards the larger more popular and more exclusive course has. The greens here are black; sand mixed with machine oil to stop it from being lifted up and deposited in Lake Eyre during a dust storm. Dust storms of such intensity are few and far between, perhaps only every two years and then lasting only ten minutes; an unwelcome weather event when it does arrive.

We drove through the mining area, again seeing the pyramids of castings, and were shown several of the 260,000 mine shafts that are all about. These remain uncovered, in fact the Mining regulations insist they be left so. This is because there could well be a miner wandering somewhere below who just might want to pop out of any one shaft for survival. The shafts are 22 metres deep, narrow and fatal; however it seems that the fatalities are rare. An aboriginal woman fell down one about ten years ago. Warnings are everywhere, both pictorial and wordy, thus there is no excuse for disobedience.

I asked Rudy about the Dog Fence and the cattle stops being the only barrier over the road sections. He assured me that sheep, cattle and dogs will not cross a grid. I told him that sheep and dogs in New Zealand do so; obviously they are more evolved there, or more stupid.

The last hour or so of the tour was spent in the Umoona Mine and museum which we had visited yesterday, but this time, as members of a tour party, we watched an excellent film about the geological make up of opals, the history of the mining and the strange wonders of this weird and wonderful town. The cinema, shop and museum are all inside the hill, underground and from this level we were taken down even further into the caretaker’s residence and then mining tunnels. This was all once a working mine but is now just a tourist attraction, one that has been awarded several prestigious tourist awards over recent years.

Cooper Pedy has a population of about 3,000, half of whom live underground. These hobbit holes are as large or small as any above ground house and have all the same conveniences. Generally, if they are not within the immediate main street area and on the sewerage system, they will have a long shaft close to their house, like an offal hole on a farm, into which all waste water, both grey and black is drained. Because the liquid drains slowly into the sandstone, the holes are a very very long time filling. Rudy says he has still over half his empty and he has been in his house for over twenty years; his is an above ground house.

Electricity is generated by diesel generators, although there is one Nordic wind turbine close to the power station that contributes in a small way. This turbine was apparently one of the very first constructed and put into use in Australia.

Water is piped in from a bore out in the desert, in an area like the Moon Plains. Who would know that the artesian basin lies within reach in such a place? Here in Coober Pedy it sometimes does not rain for a couple of years, so the lack of water was a huge impediment to the development for this area until that bore was successfully drilled. Before that time, water was rationed to 100 litres a week per person, and before that 75 gallons every two months. Chris and I calculated that to be about 600 pints which works out to be about 31 and a half litres per week. (In comparison, Chris and I can make 85 litres last four days when we have to.)

Mining for opals is now carried out by about thirty or forty claim holders. The number of miners has diminished greatly over the past ten years because of the cost of fuel, used to generate the power required by the machinery used on the digs. The whole business of finding opal is pretty hit and miss by all accounts, hence no big company bothers doing so. Miners can prospect for months, eating up the dollars in diesel and their own sustenance and find nothing or opals or such poor quality it is not even worth taking them from the mine site. On the other hand, some strike it lucky and find opals worth many many thousands of dollars. The Umoona opal shop has a rock imbedded with opals worth over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It is a game for those with a gambling bent and most acknowledge this. Our tour guide, Rudy, came to Australia from Austria when he was just twenty five years old, was an opal miner all his working life (he is now 76 years old) and says that he and his wife, now deceased, elected not to have a family because of the risky and unreliable life lived by those who do.

Opal was discovered here accidentally in 1914 by 14 year old Willie Hutchison. He was travelling with his father and others in search of gold. He was left in charge of the camp while the others went in search of water, which had by this time become more desperate than their desire to find gold. Being a boy, and evidently bored, he drifted off on his own and found water and opals. When he returned to camp, his distraught father and companions were hardly in a position to reprimand him for disobedience. The rest became history.

Young Willie is immortalised in the name of the main street here and with a memorial that I understand we will pass tomorrow.

Due to Coober Pedy’s remoteness and the advent of World War I, the opal rush did not really take off here until 1919, when returning soldiers made their way in great numbers, happy to endure the harsh climate and conditions. It was second nature to burrow into the hills for the cool, tunnelling and trenches had become second nature to them.

It should be noted here that the name of the settlement was known as the Stuart Range Mine, but was renamed to line up with the local aboriginals take on the place, “kupa” meaning white man or initiated and “piti” meaning hole in the ground. To this day, full blooded aboriginals will not venture underground, and so it can be understood why this burrowing of the first miners, who worked and lived underground was considered rather strange.

Today Coober Pedy, together with Mintabie a little to the north west, and Andamooka south east, near the Olympic Dam mine that is about to dwarf all multi mines of all time, produce over 90% of the world’s opal.

We enjoyed the tour immensely, and no doubt will revisit some of the places hinted at or shown, but for this afternoon, we will remain inside out of the sun and out of the wind that has come up so fiercely that Chris has just been out to rope the awning down in addition to the stays and straps that were already installed.