Day 9 Coober Pedy

Jacqui and I woke early and left the boys inside to sleep while we had a coffee under the awning. I made a coffee for the young bloke in the ute next to us who was making his way from Geelong to Kakadu. He’d picked up a job in maintenance at one of the resorts and was keen to get up there for the fishing. We also met a lovely couple; Jeff and Raimie Hulm. They have property at Esperance but spend 8mths each year fishing up in the gulf country of the Northern Territory. They’re heading back to the farm to help their son with the harvest and they’ve invited us to spend New Years Eve at their place. We want to have a good look around Esperance and they seemed such a nice couple so we’ll be doing all we can to catch up for a day or two. After getting the boys and ourselves organised, we headed into town looking for the information centre and came away with a couple of places we needed to check out before leaving. It’s getting hot again so we’re looking for places with air-conditioning. We started at the Orthodox Serbian Underground Church. Like White Cliffs, the locals try to spend as much time underground as possible and they’ve done a great job here. We then headed for The Big Winch which is basically the top of town and I took some video of the local area. After The Big Winch, we took some time in the Underground Bookstore where the owner agreed to let me interview him and then on to The Cave Hotel and Museum for a coffee and underground tour. The heat is taking its toll but other than that, the only problem we’ve had was the Fuji Film store owner who went ballistic when I started to video him while in his store. The guy went ape and screamed at me all the way out the front door. A bit freaky but at least I didn’t have Jacqui or the boys with me. They were all sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the Jeep.
By this time it was 2pm so we headed back to the park for a swim and some lunch. We met some fellow travellers who gave us some good tips on where to stay and where to avoid before we settled down for the hottest part of the day.
After a swim, some scrabble, another swim and then dinosaur snap with Jacob, it was time to have some dinner and then we began to prepare for tomorrow. We need to get everything organised for an early start tomorrow so we can avoid travelling during the hottest part of the day. Next stop Kulgera and then Uluru.
Cheers,
Jorg