Still @ Coober Pedy

We are still at Coober Pedy - just waiting for the wind to settle before heading off tomorrow (Tuesday).  It is a nice day today with not too much wind about - the week long strong southerlies seems to have finished.  Tomorrow the north easterlies will start and will take us all the way to Woomera (hopefully!).  

I don't mind Coober Pedy, although Neil has strictly forbidden me from looking at the Real Estate window - a stern I couldn't live here was noted!  I can't say I could live here - I think the constant hot weather in Summer would get to me - usally around the 45 - 50 degree mark!!!  Hence why when you come to Coober Pedy a great deal of the town is underground.  When we were walking around we did notice that there were quite a few less older houses that have built above ground and really the underground homes are occupied by the people who have been here for a while or even some of the miners.  Below is a photo of 2 side by side  and the one with the tyres in the ground to act as a retaining wall has small pipes coming out of the ground - they are the breather pipes ...

 this is another house and a close look at how the front of the house or entrance is built in front of the mound and the bulk of the house is in the hillside ...

 looking at the house fronts they aren't exactly the most architectually designed houses and we did wonder when 2 houses are next to each other how do they decide where the boundary line is in the actual hillside - Neil thinks there is no regulations here in terms of building codes but I think there has to be some or else the hillsides would collapse as people would just go into the hillside and tunnel out into their neighbours rooms!
When you look at Coober Pedy there is alot of metal - not sure on the recyling here but in this photo you can see at the bottom a whole heap of trucks, cars etc ... this is someones yard!

 maybe when things break down or when miners want to build a contraption for their mining they come here and create it from this junk!
The best spot to view the town and surrounds is at the Big Winch ...

from here you can see town ...

 and all around the barron surrounding area ...

 it certainly would take a lot of getting use to if you wanted to live here - we saw a piece of land in town that was going for $30,000 with sewer but I would hate to know just where the sewerage would go considering the surrounding underground is peoples homes!
The main street is pretty full on and higglety pigglety and cars, utes and trucks go everywhere with no regard for pedestrian safety.  There is NO grass anywhere!  It is all dust and red dirt.  Quite a few accomodations and restaurants and cafes have the underground experience and most people go to them as a novelty.  Every 2nd shop is an Opal shop selling jewellery or pieces of opal. There is an IGA and another supermarket called the miners market.  Both are good and since there is an Indian population here they both have exotic food.  Neil tought that instead of taking pasta and salami why not try something different and he found dehydrated flavoured tofu packets that he has decided we should try - you soak the dehydrated tofu in hot water and then add the sachet flavouring and coconut milk and cook off.  We will add carrots, dehyrdated peas and onion to this and also have 2 minute noodles with it.  This is our food to Woomera - we have 4 meals of this - roast chicken, chicken, curry and mixed vegetables with another Chicken Satay tetra pack meal to break up the monotony!
We had a curry one yesterday just to try the tofu out but we didn't have the coconut milk - it wasn't bad but I insisted that it had to have coconut milk with it and we found some coconut milk powder instead of taking the tins.
Tomorrow we head off and it will take us 3 days to get to Glendambo which according to Wiki Camps has internet but when you look at the Telstra map of coverage - there is none so maybe there could be a blog on Thursday or Friday if not we will get coverage at Woomera on Saturday or Sunday at the latest - depending if these northerly winds pan out!