I got to Adelaide Saturday night and headed to the hostel. Sunday morning Stacia and I went to the city markets. Apparently, I am now obsessed with markets. After the market I got to cycle (take a bike ride) around Adelaide. The city has a great thinks called City Bikes which you can hire for the day for FREE! So of course, I jumped at the chance. I cycled all around Adelaide, not really knowing where I was headed. I just wanted to see the city. I went by the South Australia Museum, down to the Yarra River, through the botanical garden, and all over. Just like Melbourne, the buildings in Adelaide were just beautiful. Old, and rustic and full of history I am sure.
We only had one day in Adelaide, and Sunday night we got on a greyhound bus headed to Coober Pedy. Sleeping on a greyhound bus, is not so great but we survived. We arrived in Coober Pedy 13 hours after leaving Adelaide at 5:15 in the morning. Dead tired, we were picked up by our hostel, got checked into our hostel and crashed for about an hour.
The first glimpse of Coober Pedy came at 8:15 AM or so and it was a sight to see. This tiny tiny town has a population of about 3,500 people but most live underground. They do this because it can get extremely hot in the summers and cold in the winters. By living underground, the temperature only changes by three or four degrees. We also stayed underground at our hostel and it was really cool. Rock walls, and little caves with beds made for quite the experience.
Monday morning (the morning we arrived) we met our tour group at the local bookstore for the Mail Run Tour. There were 13 of us and we piled into a 4WD and took the mail around to 5 different cattle stations and two small towns. Starting in Coober Pedy we drove out past the Dingo Fence towards William Creek. The Dingo Fence was built to keep the wild dingos, which can be very dangerous, away from the large cities. It is the longest man made structure (longer than the Great Wall of China) and it goes through Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. From William Creek we traveled along the Old Ghan Railway towards Oodnadatta and then back around to Coober Pedy. It was a long day, full of lots of beautiful scenery. Surprisingly, there was a lot of vegetation growing because of a several rain storms in the last month. As we were driving back the sun was setting and the stars were beginning to show. It was so flat and with no lights around, there were hundreds of thousands of stars. It was like a huge dome on top of us. It was absolutely stunning.
Tuesday was our second day in Coober Pedy. After spending the morning roaming around the town, we went on another tour, just around the town though. We got to see the historic sights of the town like the underground churches, bookstores, and the desert gold course. Then we drove out to the opal mining fields. We got to see lots of mines, and we even got to do some fossicking-- looking for opals in the dirt mounds. After the mines we drove around to Crocodile Harry's house which has now become a tourist attraction and then we made it to the breakaways. These are the plateaus and cliffs that were made by the ocean when there was still an ocean in the prehistoric times. We ended our tour at the dingo fence again, and then made it back to Coober Pedy.
Unfortunately, by that time, our trip was pretty much over. We went back to the bus station and took the greyhound back to Adelaide. Wednesday morning we arrived in Adelaide, and caught our plane back to Brisbane.
It's not much longer now until the end of the semester and the trip back home. It truly has been a one of a kind experience.
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