Pimba to Coober Pedy

The road is now a reddish colour instead of the traditional colour. We stopped for lunch at The Twins road stop. Oh no, the flies have appeared! We got out our trusty Desert Cream that we bought from Alice Springs last time we were here.

                   

  

We put our UHF radio to channel 40 just as a VERY wide 7.5 metre load was heading towards us, with a lead car warning us to get off the road. It was a huge mining truck on the back of a huge truck. We enjoyed listening to the banter between the pilot car and the truck!

       

We arrived at Coober Pedy and headed for diesel. We learnt where the locals filled up last trip, not in the main street – turn right at the drive in. It was 10 cents a litre cheaper!

We did our washing opposite Centrelink, where you could buy 30 litres of water for 20 cents. Randall fired up the generator and we sat the washing machine in the caravan. The soap suds went down the main street. I didn’t know which way to look!! It’s sometimes hard being married to Randall!! We got 

talking to a dairy farming couple from Gippsland, who sprung us, but had a good laugh.

                               

When we had finished we headed off to our camp spot for the night.

We hoped to stay just outside of the town about 1.5km along the William Creek road. Sadly the William Creek Road was closed, so that put an end to our hopes of visiting Lake Eyre. We were both very disappointed. The man at the information centre told us that they had had 20ml of rain each day for the last 4 days and that the road was a mess. He said that Lake Eyre was full, and mostly from rainfall, not water from Queensland, which is unusual. He also said it would take up to a week to evaporate. We heard on the radio that tourists were stranded at William Creek.

We camped overnight at the site of a monument to Stuart – Randall reckoned if it was good enough for Stuart to camp here, it was ok for us! It was a bit lonely though!!

In the morning we did a bit of a checkout of the town, and discovered a great IGA store that Randall reckoned was better than Bunnings. It had a bit of everything! We did our shopping and when he went to pay Randall was asked for his Pensioner card! (I know we’re old but….)

As we left Coober Pedy we were stopped at a big Police setup for alcohol and drugs.

There are signs everywhere telling you to watch out for holes in the ground. You can see why!