Australia day 13

9 July

Due to the frigid temperature in our caravan, sleep was problematic. We managed to survive the night, but by 6:00 AM, when we both found ourselves awake, we decided to get underway, even though it was dark outside. At leased with the engine running we'd have warmth and we'd be that much closer to our next destination. We had set our GPS for Port Augusta, 1018 km to the south. It would take us more than 10 hours of non-stop driving to get there at the speed limit, a goal we realistically expected we'd spread over two days, not one. By 6:30 AM we eased out of Erldunda with a full tank of fuel (topped up the night before) and headed south. Our talking GPS announced that we had 1000 key-low-me-terse to go. (1000 km) and for the rest of the day we listened as she (our GPS had an Australian-accented female voice) counted them down 20 km at a time.

Along the way we watched carefully for wildlife in the inky darkness while I drove with the center line directly below my feet. None popped up. We also watched as the darkness was replaced by the faintest light of dawn, followed in stages by the moment a horizon could be discerned ahead of us, and then by the moment the shapes around us took on hues of natural color. Razelle remarked that last night's sunset had been shades of purple and pink, but this morning's sunrise was instead shades of red, orange and yellow.

We reached Kulgera ahead of the sun, but not by much. I went into the roadhouse and met the station-mistress. I asked her how cold it had gotten during the night. "Minus six," was her reply. In Fahrenheit, that's about 21 degrees! We sure picked the wrong night for an un-powered caravan site! All around us were surfaces dusted with a layer of frost. The first rays of the sun appeared and selectively burned the frost away from only the surfaces they could reach.

I posed our stuffed monkey on a frosted fence rail for a photo-op of the frost. I left our bitter melons in the fruit quarantine bin and then we drove to the South Australia (SA) state line. They don't allow fresh fruit and "veggies" across the line, so we stopped there and ate our cherry tomatoes, snow peas and apples with salad fixings. It was a nutritious pre-breakfast eaten in vain. Not only were there no inspectors here, but the very next roadhouse we came to within SA (Marla, where we topped up the tank, of course) sold the very produce we didn't want to relinquish. How would anyone know which of our fruits and veggies came from which side of the line after we purchased more here?

Some may consider the vast outback boring (Razelle can testify on their behalf) but I found the interminable vastness to be endlessly fascinating. We stopped twice at rest areas in the middle of seeming nothingness, where I stretched my legs and first found a park land of coarse red sand filled with white-barked gum trees supporting a wondrously cacophonous community of birds; and later, a prairie land paved with weather-worn pebbles shining with a sun-baked patina. Boring? Not in the least!

We reached Coober Pedy by 3:30 PM and topped up again. The approach to Coober Pedy passed kilometers of weirdly raped landscape pimpled with teepee-shaped tailing mounds left over from the opal mining process. It was otherworldly! It was sad that these heaps marred the landscape everywhere, left behind by opal-fever inflicted miners! We had to investigate Coober Pedy. We ended our day here.

Coober Pedy is an international destination. Our caravan park is part of a motel complex. People to the right of us in the caravan park spoke German, to the left of us something Baltic-sounding, at the front desk I passed Arabic speakers wearing Saudi getup. The literature said that one of the opal mines offered a self-guided tour in Hebrew, among its many available languages. We stopped for groceries and were attended by Filipinos who suggested that the Chinese restaurant might have vegetarian dishes. The entire downtown area is perhaps three blocks long. At either end is a pizza bar and a petrol station, in between are a number of opal shops.

Razelle entered one of these opal shops and struck up an immediate rapport with its owner, who was originally Greek. He'd lived in Coober Pedy exactly as long as Razelle had lived in Beer Sheva. He'd immigrated here to mine opals. Now he sells them. He recommended the Greek restaurant in town. Razelle had a wonderful vegetarian musaka, I had a wonderful Greek salad with brown olives and feta cheese to go with a small bowl of vegetarian spaghetti. It was all heavenly. I also indulged myself with a goblet of red Shiraz wine. We returned to our campground very contented from this meal and from the Mediterranean ambiance. After 3 weeks away from home we realized how much we missed that ambiance and those flavors.

Whoever says the outback is boring hasn't been to Coober Pedy!