The Greatest Journey -- Rockets and Opals

Unless you've driven on it, it's hard to describe the loneliness of the Stuart Highway. Even though it's the main road to Australia's tropical north and the only paved road that runs the full length, it is still quite a desolate drive. Even though we weren't really that far from civilization, there was hardly any traffic on the road. A few cars here and there but several road trains, the behemoths of the road, the juggernauts of the highways.

Road trains are an Australian innovation and were created to solve the problem of getting supplies to remote communities. They are primarily used to move livestock and fuel but can sometimes take other items. It was realized that it would be more economical to move these things en masse rather than in regular big rigs, so a sort of super big rig was invented. Imagine a big rig with three trailers attached to it, and that's pretty much a road train. But I saw something that I had never seen before, and I've only since seen them in South Australia --- 4-car road trains! I thought that 3 cars was the most you could have but there were some fuel road trains that indeed had 4. Imagine the power necessary to move that much weight. Unfortunately, and this will most disappoint my brother, I don't have a picture.

Isabella and I continued up the Stuart Highway at a fairly brisk speed. In this environment you can see to the far horizon and there are no police patrols, so you can really make some fantastic distances in great time. We were truly in the outback now and the thing about being an outback tourist is that in order to drive from one place of interest to the next, you need a lot of time. The drive to Coober Pedy would be long but there was one place to stop along the way, Woomera.

Woomera was built after World War 2 as a military community to support Australia's Cold War communications roles and as a base for Australia's space program. The community was built just off the Stuart Highway and for a long time was a closed community, though there is free access now. Woomera became the home of Australia's space program and from there Australia launched its first satellites, the 3rd country to do so from its own soil. Appropriately, a "woomera" is an aboriginal device which cradled a spear. Rockets were launched from Woomera for many decades before the program was shut down.

Isabella and I pulled in to Woomera and felt that we had stumbled across a town that had seen much better days. We stopped to get some produce from the local store but the shelves were mostly empty, as were the streets. Woomera seemed almost a ghost town. The town's main attraction is the Missile Park which has examples of Australian rocketry and assorted military paraphernalia. We sort of wandered around before driving the streets, many of which once had buildings beside them, but now were just through empty lots. The town wasn't very exciting or interesting, I'm afraid, so we left pretty quickly.

As we drove out of Woomera we entered the Woomera Prohibited Area. To support the military operations at Woomera, the Commonwealth declared that a very large area of South Australia would henceforth be prohibited from unauthorized entry. Further away, the Australian government had detonated British nuclear weapons on their behalf for testing. You still can't enter the Woomera Prohibited Area without permission except on certain public roads, the Stuart Highway being one of them. Every so often there was a sign on the side of the road reminding you that entry onto the land was prohibited.

Woomera was also in the news a few years ago when a refugee detention centre was built there on the nearby army base. It seemed to me to be such a waste of time and resources to move these asylum seekers halfway across the country into one of its more remote areas. However, politics is all about presentation and this "looked good". The center was eventually shut down due to health concerns.

Isabella and I drove on, watching as the kilometers ticked away and terrain became more flat and even less green. After some time there didn't seem to be any plants at all and it was truly a desert. Something we did see along the way which amused us were a series of signs that warned of camels and livestock on the road in 4 languages: English, German, Mandarin and Japanese. It seems that these 4 groups constitute the bulk of the people that come through this way. One thing we did see, which made us very glad, was blue sky and sunshine for the first time on the trip. We'd finally cleared the rainy patches and were on our way to sunny skies.

After driving what seemed like an eternity, we reached Coober Pedy, the opal capital of Australia. When a track was being blazed through this area, the Europeans found themselves in a bit of a fix as they were running out of water and the temperatures were searing. The leader told his son to mind the camp while they went off. The son didn't listen and when he returned his father was about to admonish him when the son revealed that not only had he found water, he'd also found opals. Now, what can you say to that?

After some time, news of this find spread and eventually others followed and set up individual mining operations. The local aboriginals came to call the area "kupa piti" which literally translates as "the uninitiated peoples' hole in the ground", but the sense is "white man's hole", and this became anglicized to Coober Pedy. This is because digging for opals requires deep holes to be dug. There were even signs to be careful as there were open shafts in the area. Because it's so risky, opal mining is an entirely private enterprise and there are no opal mining corporations as such, at least not in Coober Pedy.

Opal mining still happens in Coober Pedy and to help this, a local invented something called a "blower", which is just a truck with a big fan. As the rock is crushed up, the blower sucks up the rock and then blows it out the other end. The miner can then separate the poor quality opal, or "potch", from the fine quality. There's a giant blower on a sign as you drive in to Coober Pedy.

Another of Coober Pedy's innovations was the underground dwelling. These dwellings aren't really underground but built into the hills. In the days before air conditioning, this was the way to keep your property cool. The ground is an excellent insulator and the homes are fine all year round. Unfortunately all the land for this purpose has been used up so the only way you'll get such a dwelling is if you buy one, but what a wonderful existence. It's not only dwellings that are made this way, but a few churches as well. The most famous one is the Serbian church but as they charge admission, Isabella and I went to the free Catacombs Church. It was certainly much cooler inside than outside but it did smell a bit funny.

You'll have noticed that I just mentioned that there is a Serbian church. In case you think that Coober Pedy is some sort of backwards backwater, it most definitely is not. The town prides itself on its cosmopolitanism and states in the public literature that there are some 40 ethnicities in Coober Pedy; this for a population of 2 000. So Coober Pedy is a bit of a melting pot as well, and melt you might, given the local heat.

And the amazing things about Coober Pedy don't stop there. The city is not on the state's power grid and produces all of its power locally from generators, wind power and solar power. It's also been the scene of science fiction movies, like Pitch Black, lies close to the Dingo Fence (I'll write about that later), is the last truly populated place on the Stuart Highway until Alice Springs, some 500+ kilometers to the north and, in keeping with the Australian penchant for "big" things, had the Big Winch. Coober Pedy is a truly remarkable, if remote, place.

Isabella and I decided to rough it a bit and checked into a caravan park but we got a metered site; not too rough, now. We originally wanted to stay in an underground hostel but when we got there, even though there was a sign saying they'd reopen in January, it appeared closed. We were a little disappointed but liked the place we picked anyway.

Later on we went for a tour in the Opal Museum, which is mostly underground. We saw the history of the town, how opal is formed and even went through an old mine. There is even an example of an underground home. When we got to the bedroom someone on the tour made perhaps the worst joke I'd ever heard; he said, "No jokes now about making the bed rock." You cannot imagine the groans that little bit of humour received. I still think it was the highlight of the tour. To finish it off, the tour guide even showed us how opal is polished.

After some more wandering around the town, Isabella and I got some pizzas for dinner and watched an Australia classic, The Castle. It's about a family fighting a large corporation trying to expropriate their home to expand the airport. It's a comedy and I it's one of my favourite Australian movies. With the sun setting on the featureless horizon, Isabella and I fell asleep wondering how the next day would turn out. We would finally be stopping some place for a few days and we were heading to Australia's most famous outback city --- Alice Springs.