G’day!
Welcome to Letters From the Road, and letter number 8. Today we’re in Coober Pedy, and we are being held there against our will because of a leak and a bicycle tube.
For those of you for whom this is your first letter, welcome! Good on ya for signing up and reading. Letters From the Road is the story of a family road trip in Australia, told one weekly installment at a time using my journal entries written during the trip. You’ll probably figure this out, but I thought I may as well mention that the quoted bits below are the journal entries, and the rest is me filling in the gaps.
It’s also worth mentioning that the special artwork included has been graciously provided by my super talented little brother Nick. You can find more of his art here, but as great as it is, I’m hoping that at some point he’ll start adding pictures of Coober Pedy mining trucks to his collection. He’s clearly got a talent for it.
And if you’ve just joined us, you’re not that far behind - you can find the other seven letters here, underneath a stack of beer cartons, right next to an airplane propeller.
Let’s open up your letter!
Luke
If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet it’s farthest from - Luke Skywalker
8th October 2019 - Coober Pedy, South Australia
Clear and cold this morning. It got to 9 degrees overnight or something.I’m sitting in the Passion Bakery and Cafe. It’s run by two Indian guys from Berwick outside Melbourne. They’ve been running it for 3 years, and only make coffee using proper Genovese roasted coffee from Melbourne. ‘South Australia IGA coffee is no good,’ one of them said. ‘It costs us a bit more to bring it up here, but people notice.’
They come up to Coober Pedy seven months out of the year, then every November move back to Melbourne. It’s flat out during the winter with tourists, they told me. Eventually the plan is to open up a cafe in Melbourne, and at the end of the month, they are leaving and might not be coming back.
Welcome to Coober Pedy, population 2,000 and the self proclaimed Opal Capital of the World. It’s a land of opportunity, always has been, and not just for people from the big city looking to start a cafe.
In 1915, a group called the New Colorado Prospecting Syndicate were looking for gold, when one of their group named Willie Simpson instead discovered opals. You’ve probably heard of opals, but in case you’re not familiar, they are iridescent precious stones that reflect the light in such a way that you can almost see fiery rainbows in their depths.
A mining outpost grew up in the area near Simpson’s discovery, and it eventually became the town of Coober Pedy. It was the wild west from there, as the sandstone around Coober Pedy proved to be full of opals, and apparently still is. People made the trip there from all over the world looking to make their fortune.
The Opal Capital of the World moniker is well deserved. I’ve read different statistics on the matter, but all come to the conclusion that somewhere between 70-90% of the opals in the world are said to have come from Coober Pedy.
You could say that Coober Pedy is a bit like Las Vegas, minus the fun. Both are located in the middle of the desert. Both have famous signs - Vegas has its iconic diamond shaped ‘Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas Nevada’ sign, and Coober Pedy has one that just says ‘Coober Pedy’ that sits atop a mountain of rocks. It also has another large ‘Coober Pedy’ sign outside of town that is adorned with a truck that has what looks like a catapult mounted to the back, but is in fact a piece of mining equipment.
In Las Vegas, you are never arms length away from a slot machine. Just off the plane and itching to start losing money straight away? Plenty of slot machines can be found on your way to the baggage carousel. End up at 7-11 looking for soulless food or cigarettes or liquor, because you’re in Vegas and all forms of disregard for your body are on the table? There are a couple slots in the corner, and they look lucky. Coober Pedy doesn’t have slot machines, it has opals. Opals are for sale everywhere. There are opal shops of course, but you can also peruse stones at the grocery stores, the petrol station, and the book store.
But it’s not been all boom times in Coober Pedy. As the price of opals fluctuates, so does the pulse of the town. I’m pretty sure that we were there when the place was sleeping.
We’d always planned to overnight in Coober Pedy, and I will admit that it is a good place to stop. It is well situated as a stopover for those traveling north to Uluru as we were, because getting to the big red rock is a solid days drive and there’s not much in between. We knew this from having done just such a thing a few years back. The caravan park lodging options are basic but comfortable, there are a couple of servos and shops for most anything you might need, and a place called John’s Pizza does a decent pie.
Our stay was supposed to be for one night only, and one night is enough. But because our car had been damaged the day before when we were driving on the Oodnadatta Track (I sent a letter about our experiences on the Oodnadatta, and you can check it out if you’re so inclined) our time would probably be extended for a day, depending on how long repairs would take.
Why is one night enough? Because I find Coober Pedy creepy.
Everything appears temporary. It’s a collection of metal sheds that look like they were dropped haphazardly on top of a bunch of rocks in the middle of the desert. There are piles of dirt left indiscriminately all over the place, making it feel a little like a construction site, maybe the whole town is about to be covered over and forgotten.
The desert here is a drab tan colour, and it is the sort of desert where there is little vegetation, which gives town a sparse, dead feel. The buildings, the roads, and everyone’s general disposition has taken on the same drab colour, either from being bleached by the persistent sun or because it’s covered in dust.
Temperatures tend to be extreme, which lends to the dead feel - most people stay inside and it seems almost deserted. But the weather has also led to a very unique feature of Coober Pedy, in that many of the hardy residents have decided to live in caves. These are not caves of the bears and bats variety. Called ‘dugouts’, the cave residences of Coober Pedy are a touch more civilized. They have lights, plumbing, and wonderful climate control without the use of air conditioning due to being underground. Some even include refinements like swimming pools, and your wine cellar can actually just be in the kitchen. Digging a hole for your house can be a wonderfully malleable way of building too. Need a spot for your television to sit in the living room? Grab a pick and bust out a shelf in the rock. Expecting? Hire a backhoe to dig out a room for the baby. It’s not too flexible if you change your mind about things, though.
In addition to the residences, Coober Pedy is also home to underground churches, hotels, and restaurants. As interesting as it all is, however, I cannot get over the oddity of driving down the street past a hole in the side of a hill and know that it’s probably someone’s house.
After getting the trailer electrics fixed for $50 - a bargain - at a place called OME, and now waiting on a new tyre, it’s already 3 o’clock so we’ll be in Coober Pedy again tonight.
I’ve just now backed the trailer into our spot at the Oasis Tourist Park, an endeavour which took 10 minutes last night and 10 minutes just now. I told Oscar I wasn’t going to survive trailer management, and that backing it up was impossible. To which he said, ‘Don’t worry, at least you’ll get a participation certificate.’
Coober Pedy seems like a dusty place that’s been cobbled together between a ragtag group of miners and weirdos. In true spirit, Katie spent an hour creating a cover for our trailer plug out of plastic, a twist tie, a rivet, another twist tie and superglue.
I just read that Trump tweeted the following: “As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done it before!)”
Great and unmatched wisdom? Obliterate the Economy of Turkey… again? Who the fuck does he think he is, the Emperor of Rome?
Trump and his tweets were the spiciest thing happening in Coober Pedy that day, most of which was spent hanging around in various auto repair shops, and when that’s the case you know that it’s time to move on. Staying a second night in Coober Pedy had not been in the plans. But considering the situation and that we had been able to get all our repairs completed in just one day, we went to sleep full of pizza and satisfied, ready to drive north the next day.
9th October 2019 - Coober Pedy (again)
We were just about to hit the road to Uluru, in record time at 9am, when I noticed our car leaking fuel. Maybe it’ll be ok until we make it to Alice Springs, I thought. It’s not leaking that badly. Then I decided to show the leak to Katie, and here we are back at the OME with the Prado up on a lift getting looked at by Ronny.The OME, which stands for Opal Miners Enterprise, is like something you’d find in the middle of the post-apocalyptic desert, straight out of Mad Max.
The Mad Max feel isn’t just me. In 1985, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was filmed in Coober Pedy. I can’t help but wonder which cave Mel Gibson and Tina Turner stayed in.
On one side of the dusty OME compound is an assembly of large tin sheds. Piles of tan and pink rock rise beyond the fence. A giant diesel tank sits in the middle, serving a couple old bowsers. Scattered around are about ten dusty cars, motorcycles, an old articulated dump truck with blocks of wood stacked underneath, a white delivery truck with no rear wheels, and some tractor attachments. Two tin outhouses sit off to one side, with a sink between them that slowly leaks water on to a spot on the ground where pink flowers are growing.
Two dogs roam the grounds, one a terrier named Gypsy, and another whose name I don’t remember but will call Stinky because he farts a lot and was smoking out the little office that’s located inside one of the sheds.
Stacked alongside the sheds are two dozen tyres of different sizes, shapes, and age. Next to the office lie many empty cartons of Carlton Mid Strength Beer. You’ve got to have something to do when the weather gets really hot and things get slow, I guess.
Piles of random things - an old go kart, bumpers, a shelving unit, more tyres - can be found collected in different spots throughout the yard, probably in the hopes that some of the bits and pieces may someday be useful again.
‘What’s that? You need an airplane propeller?’ I can imagine them saying, eyes wide.
For the second day in a row we found ourselves loitering around in the OME compound, waiting. Yesterday it was the Anderson Plug and trailer lights connection that we tore off on the Oodnadatta track, which Mick repaired for us. Today it was a fuel leak that Ronny was looking at with the Prado up on the lift.
After two hours of messing around, getting himself soaked in diesel, Ronny found the culprit: a cracked pipe. 30 minutes later we were told to come back in two days and the new pipe would be ready to install. Meanwhile, Ronny fashioned a band aid for the fuel system out of an old bicycle tube, and we were on our way back to the Oasis Caravan Park.
‘Oh, it’s you again?’ the friendly girl in the office at the Oasis asked, a touch of pity in her voice, as I made my sullen request to stay another two nights while we waited for car parts to be shipped from Adelaide.
This got me down.
Just wait, there’s more.
This morning I received the latest email newsletter on the Kimberley, and reading through it pushed me down even more. After an exceptional wet season the previous year where there wasn’t much rain, then a bushfire, and things in the Kimberley are closing up early this year. Do those plans need to be rethought now? We’ll have a couple of long days in Coober to do so, I guess.
Going to the Kimberley, and specifically traversing it via the Gibb River Road, a famous Outback Track, was a big part of our plans. The Kimberley is the northernmost section of Western Australia, a far flung and unique part of Australia, a place of freshwater crocodiles, majestic gorges and waterfalls. Everything in that part of the country is so dependent on the weather - the rivers, the freshies, even the roads. Too much water, and the roads are impassable. Too little, and everything dries up, the conditions of the road turn rough - rougher than usual - and all the fun and interesting lodges and campgrounds close.
So the news that places in the Kimberley might be closing early because of weather was tough. A big part of our trip seemed to be slipping away. We knew from the start that we couldn’t dawdle on our drive north in order to get Kimberley before the weather shifted and the wet season started, and we had been trying our best. Now it looked like our hands were tied, and our plans as shaky as the fuel lines on our car that were held together by a bicycle tube.
That said, having to stay in Coober Pedy longer than 1 or 2 days is enough to get anyone down by itself. It is not a place you want to be stranded. But clearly that wasn’t the case with the nice Indian guys running the Passion Bakery and Cafe. They see Coober Pedy, for all its weirdness and quiet and dust, as an opportunity. You can imagine that’s how it is in the days when opal prices are high and you are in possession of a piece of the desert where there isn’t a hole yet.
But the only opportunity we wanted at that point, was an opportunity to leave.