After the highlights of Alice Springs and Uluru, central outback Australia doesn't have huge amounts to offer other than flies and amazing sunsets!
No one that has been to Australia has ever really mentioned the flies. There are bajillions of them and as soon as you head outside, you are swarmed. No word of a lie, there are normally about 20 of them at any one time constantly barraging your eyes, nostrils, mouth or ears. The only respite you get is when the sun goes down. This is another reason why the sunsets were so good! Each night, the sky burns red for several glorious minutes!
The reason I am waffling rubbish is that these few days were filled with lots of driving with lots of flat landscape! We only had a couple of stops really! One was a place called Coober Pedy, the home of opal mining in Australia. While the other, was a fleeting visit to a town called Broken Hill which rather poetically describes a town that saw a gold rush many years ago! Oh and there was a salt lake.
In Coober Pedy it is so hot that everyone lives underground. The day we were there it hit 46 degrees! Most of the other days we were travelling through the outback it was low 40s but 46 was the hottest that we know of. Which is crazy considering its December and there are Christmas songs on the radio!
In Coober Pedy, we visited old opal mines, went noodling (looking for our own opals!), to an underground house, cinema and church. Literally everything is underground in old converted mines!
Another great thing about this place was that when we went shopping (as we were on cook group), steak was then same price as chicken so we had good quality steak as for dinner! Delicious!
We also went to a kangaroo orphanage but that didn't make us feel guilty enough not to have kangaroo sausages! All the orphans from road kills are collected up and raised before getting released to the wild!
That's another thing. There is huge amounts of road kill out here. Lining the roads you will very regularly see wallabies, kangaroos, emus, goats and cows decapitated and getting eaten from the inside out by crows and wedge tail eagles!
Other than roadkill, the entertainment on the drive is limited to seeing a hill, turning left and crossing to the other side of the railway tracks. It's a long, long drive to Sydney!
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