We’re now in the lands of the Antakirinja people, the traditional owners of the vast, arid areas that surround Coober Pedy. We acknowledge their continuing ownership and connection to this land, and acknowledge their elders past, present and emerging.
We’re also now underground! I’m sure there’s plenty of lovely places to stay in Coober Pedy – but the minute we decided that this would be a stop on our journey, it was always going to be at an underground motel! We’re at the Coober Pedy Experience motel, which used to be an underground mine. There’s plenty of space around the rooms, with tables and lounges – but the rooms themselves feel a bit pokey! I’m sure they’re relatively the same size as other motel rooms – but without windows, it feels so much more cramped. But with all the tables and chairs outside the room, we’ll just spend our time out there. (Plus, we’ve hopefully got heaps planned for tomorrow!)
But I’ve jumped ahead a bit. The drive to get here today was… long.
It’s just shy of 600km to get from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy. I read a few reviews / travel guides that said this stretch of the Stuart Hwy is actually the emptiest part of the whole journey. But as we pulled into Coober Pedy, Debbie and I agreed that if that was the emptiest and most unrelenting run of desert starkness, then we’re really looking forward to the rest – because that really wasn’t so bad!
As we left Port Augusta, we were quickly welcomed / reminded that we’ve arrived in the outback. But that became obvious very quickly – the land really did start to become flat and arid, with lots of low-lying scrub and red dirt.
Woomera worked well as our first stop, about two hours in. Every guide or search you do for things to see on this stretch of the highway basically has Woomera and maybe one other thing – that’s it. And Woomera definitely was an interesting place. It immediately felt very much like a base – rows and rows of very plain and perfectly aligned portable units for accomodation, and lots of RAAF signage all around. And, in reality, that’s exactly what it is – it’s a working RAAF base for various weapon testing. But since the mid 80s, it’s been open to the public as well. We dropped into the park in the middle of the village with its enormous collection of missiles and planes on display – if you were a defence weaponry fan, you’d be in heaven here. We were basically the only people there – if it wasn’t for a handful of people doing a bit of construction work at the theatre across the street, it would’ve felt incredibly eerie. It still kind of did.
Back on the road (with a quick top up of petrol from the Pimba Roadhouse to make sure we didn’t need anymore petrol to get to Coober Pedy), and our next stop really wasn’t all that far.
The SA outback is full of salt lakes. But most of them are either much closer to the Oodnadatta Track, or in the middle of nowhere. So it was great to pull into Lake Hart, really only about 30 minutes along from Pimba, which sits right beside the highway. You pull into a fairly big rest area, and then it’s about a 5 minute walk down a track to the lake. It was great to see there was still quite a bit of water in the lake – but still plenty of opportunity to walk on the amazing salt crust.
After Lake Hart, we dropped into a tiny settlement with a couple of roadhouses called Glendambo. Great looking roadhouses inside, and plenty of supplies – but unfortunately, outside there really wasn’t much in the way of picnic tables if you wanted to do your own thing. But we managed! From there, it was about 2.5 hours up to Coober Pedy. We had a really good run, enjoying watching the changing scenery. The kids listened to their iPods, and Debbie and I switched between podcasts and music. To be honest, it didn’t really feel like 2.5 hours!
Tonight, we headed out to the Coober Pedy Hollywood sign as the sun was setting – some amazing views, and it was fun getting some photos as well. From there, we headed into a pizza place for dinner, which was yummy. As you may have noticed from the first photo, all 5 of us are in one room tonight – the first time so far on this trip! The kids will hopefully start winding down and falling asleep soon – we have quite a few more single room stays to come, so keen to get them used to this!
