Pt 2 - Day 60 - Coober Pedy

Well, we looked into some of the tours and once again, it is going to cost us over $200 for the family, plus we have already seen some of the sites that are part of most of the tours, so we decide to do the rest ourselves.  First stop this morning, the "Old Timers Mine".  This is an underground mine, including someone's house.  No one lives in it now, but what an amazing place.  It is like a rabbit warren and we spend a lot of time exploring here.  We come back up to the surface to watch the demonstration of how a "blower" works.  You see these things on the back of trucks all over town, and they actually "suck up" the dirt, blow out all the dust and dump the rocks.  Everyone has a go at "feeding" it.  Before we leave, the kids park themselves in the "noodling" pit, searching for opals.  They basically search through the rocks, dunk them in water to see if they can see the shining precious stone.  Again, we get back in the car with another couple of pockets full of treasure!!!!

After this we head out to the Breakaways and the Moon plains about 15km out of town.  It is out here that a lot of the movie Mad Max was filmed.  The Breakaways are formations like odd shaped hills that have been left behind, about 70million years ago the place was under water and a lot of sea fossils have been found out here.  Hard to imagine when we are so far from the coast.
After this we head to Umoona opal museum and yet another opal shop.  We are continually amazed at what looks like a gravelly hill with a door, can open up to a whole museum and show room for opals.  I do love this place and quickly find the perfect necklace I would have bought if I had recently had a lotto win!!!!

We head back to our hotel in the afternoon and drop Cody and Glen off, then the girls and I proceed to visit every opal shop in Coober Pedy.  Shannae buys a beautiful pair of earrings and Tori a bead containing a boulder opal, for her necklace.  I then drop the girls off and have some time to myself.  I buy a small souvenir necklace, not quite the original I had picked out, but one that wouldn't send me broke!!!!

What an interesting place, we are so glad we made the trip out here.