Just the Three of Us

Ayers Rock (Uluru)

Friday, July 23rd Jeff and I picked up Nicki our German friend at Ayers Rock (Uluru) and we proceeded on to hike around The Olga’s, some more big red rocks in the centre of Australia.  Its amazing how many big rocks there are in the middle of no where down here!  We found a pretty good free camping spot headed south, where we had a nice campfire and cooked some pretty cheap and nasty, yet tasty sausages over our sweet campfire.  This was the beginning of the cold evenings where a nice down sleeping bag comes in handy!

Saturday we arrived in Coober Pedy in a timely fashion.  Driving right through the center of the Opal mining, quirky town our car decided to almost fall apart!  We had lost a bolt somewhere along the way and a piece of the frame decided to drop and drag along the street with such a lovely sound to everyone within a 500 meter radius or more.  Fortunately for us, we were close to a little service station that had a few tools for us to use and a bolt that would hopefully hold our car together for the remainder of our trip!  Jeff got that all taken care of.

Nicki Noodling

We proceeded on to our campsite in Coober Pedy, which was a bit different than any other we had stayed at thus far.  It was underground!  Coober Pedy is an Opal mining town and there are literally millions of holes in the ground in the town and the surrounding areas.  There are churches, bars, hotels, houses and many other things built into the holes in the ground.  It was a pretty neat little town.  That evening we went on a night mine tour to learn more about the process of what has happened in the area and about opals.  Sunday morning we went 

The Dingo Fence

noodling ( a process of sifting through piles of cilica that the miners have already went through) for opals.  We didn’t find anything, but it was a neat experience none the less.  We roamed around the town that afternoon and talked to a lot of the locals.  They were all very friendly and had interesting tales to tell.  We also drove around The Breakaways which were pretty neat, saw the Dingo Fence (5300 km long) which is the longest fence in the world...supposedly, saw some pretty deserted places which looked kind of like the moon.  Several outer space or futuristic movies, like Mad Max and some others I can’t remember, have been shot in these areas because they are so desolate. 

Lake Hart

Leaving Coober Pedy we decided to drive down to Lake Hart, which is a massive salt lake in South Australia to camp for the evening.  We arrived after dark and played cards by the moon light.  The sunrise Monday morning was one of the best I have seen so far.  This beach at this lake was so beautiful and encrusted with salt.  It looked like ice, but wasn’t quite that cold, although it felt nearly cold enough the night before for it to be ice.  Okay...I’m exaggerating a wee bit, but hey, I’m in Australia, I have to winge about it just a little!



Flinders Ranges



From Lake Hart, we commenced on to Port Augusta to enjoy some free internet time and 50 cent ice cream cones from Macca’s.  It had been nearly a week since I had been connected to the outside world!  Then we headed on to Flinders Ranges and toodled around the ranges and saw a ton of kangaroos, wallabies and emus in the wild as well as really big trees and heaps of really old stuff that I know nothing about. Apparently its the oldest geological trail in the southern hemisphere.  It was pretty neat.  We went to our campsite from there, once the sun set, we froze our tails off!  Nicki and I decided to sleep in the car that night....it was a little warmer there!  Tuesday morning we woke up early and had breakfast in bed :)  We didn’t have to move too much to get to our breakfast which was fun.  We hiked Mt 

Ohlssen Bagge to see Wilpena Pound, yet another impressive Australian rockscape!  From Flinders Ranges we were on to our last night of camping for a couple nights.  We stumbled onto a nice little rest stop that had heaps of firewood just waiting for us to burn.  We had a massive fire that night, the funny thing about this was it wasn’t nearly as cold as the night before, so it was more just for something fun to do than to keep warm. 

Wednesday morning we woke up and hit the road towards Adelaide.  After about two hours on the road, we heard a funny noise so we pulled over to discover one of our tires was beginning to lose its tread.  Thank goodness we had a nice full size spare tire with plenty of air in it to make it to town! 



Nicki, Jeff & I

In Adelaide we found a cute little hostel called Annie’s Place to stay at and enjoy some modern day amenities like laundry, showers, kitchens and beds.  We also had our last supper with Nicki in Chinatown.  Then we met some of our new roommates, a German girl called Lisi and a Dutch guy called Tim and hung out with them for the next couple of days around Adelaide.  We will meet up with Tim in Melbourne and he may ride with us to Sydney.  



We have had lots of fun in Adelaide, but had to say goodbye to some new good friends :( Tomorrow morning we are leaving Adelaide and picking up a German boy called David that we have not met yet...we shall see how things go!  And that’s it for this chapter of my Oz trip, stay tuned for the next!



Annie's Place Gang playing games