It's been 2 months since we were "gypsies". We stored our car and caravan in Adelaide while we went to Perth to catch up on family, house affairs and friends. We have now come back and are comfortably settled back in our "gypsy house" again.
Time went by so quickly that I never got to describe Cooberpedy - the weirdest town in the world. As someone said, if the end of the world happened no one in Cooberpedy would notice.
It's all mounds of earth for flat miles and flat miles, smelly, underground houses, shops, hotels and churches (note the air vents and satellite dishes sticking out the ground)....and some very weird looking people. There is even an underground caravan park which we didn't stay in.
Opal finds still happen but are not as common as in the past. There are about 250 active miners (so I was told.) The temperature in summer can reach over 50deg C so being underground keeps everyone cool. There is not a plentiful supply of water either. It's very expensive and not even available at your sites in the caravan park!
Close by, are the Breakaways - a range of coloured mountains which have broken away from the Stuart Ranges. This was where Mad Max was filmed. The area looks exactly like a moonscape. This was also where we saw the famous dog fence that runs for 5400 km from the Darling Downs on the east to west of the Eyre peninsula on the cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain.
We weren't too keen on staying any longer than we had to. Two days was enough to see all the strangest things we had heard about.
(Chris was pointing at the opal in the wall at the Catholic Church. Opal can be found anywhere in the soft sandstone. The trick is that no-one knows where!
The guy he is standing with was a cleaner from the backpackers. He took us in and showed us all the underground bunks. It was rather smelly - probably dead mice that get caught in the seams of sandstone. Not for me!!)
