(2015/03/02) … with relaxing and getting moved around in a tour coach with Rudi a German who lives here since years and sought in younger ears his luck with digging for opals. If he had enough luck to get rich, he hasn’t told us, but he is now a tour guide, so we guess that it wasn’t too much. Having a former opal miner as guide was nice, because he fluent told stories about all that mining and it’s magic. A lot of different nations especially from Europe live here on a very small area who also build a lot of different churches there, of course as dugouts. Crazy as the people from Coober Pedy are, they also had build a golf court which was to my pleasure without any gras and almost out of dust. Just the holes where surrounded with bitumen to stabilise the gravel and secure it from blowing away or filling up. While driving though the area, the massive amount of mounds was fascinating and looked like big sandbox for grownups. On the way back we stopped at an area which is open to the public for noodling (search in old gravel piles for unfound opals) and all of us should try our luck there. This reminded me to the public areas in New Zealand for recreational gold panning.
The tour was ended where we started, at the Umoona Opal Mine where we finally got the chance to see such a mine on our own. The higher levels where a showroom for opals and gems to buy, a dugout Cinema with an movie about Coober Pedy and it’s history, a middle size dugout to display how they look and the entrance to lower levels of the mine with the opal level at about 20-28 meters depth. After the tour, Tobi and me went back to the public noodling area. Really, you will still find there “opals”, ….yeah they are called posh, white and almost colourless stones, but for us it was fun to clean, try to cut and prepare them.
Happy End with three huge pizzas, not really Italian style, but it was for me a pizza since a very long time. Most of us, the old mens, went to bed very early. I have to add on that, exact these persons arrived as first in our accommodation, searched the best places (in the living room) and where now complaining about few now, who are still awake (at 9pm) and walking silent around. Even i was asked if i could stop sitting around in the neighbour room, the kitchen, and writing my blog, because the light which illuminates the living room with some beds a bit, is irritating and preventing people form sleeping. I turned off the light and continued writing my blog, hoping that the silent klicks of my keyboard where not to loud for some…