Coober Pedy, Australia
29° 0' S 134° 53' E
Mar 07, 2005 05:51
Distance 477km

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Could there be a more UGLY town !!!!

Text written in: English

After 5 hours of driving passing six cars and a lot of eagles feeding on Kangaroo carcasses we finally arrived at the next town (no Kidding this country is huge) Coober Pedy. This is renouned for being the Opal mining capital of the world and for the underground caves everyone lives in. It definately was not up to Frelia's standards.

Tuesday morning we left for the Big Red Rock after being mobbed by a VW Kombi Fanatic (a scary race) who needed to inspect Stimpy inside and out and got so excited by Stimp's rare anti glare rearview mirror we gave it to him to shut him up. We had expected to reach Uluru that night but after 4hrs driving in 43'C heat we had a blowout. Changing the tyre in the heat on the side of the highway was an experience to say the least. We put the spare on and headed to the next roadhouse luckerly only 60km away. Here we managed to get a spare which involved a lot of DIY as the mechanic was from another planet although he claimed to be British!!(Funny how UK Customs didnt think so)

With a new spare we headed off and after no more than 70km we had another blowout, this was getting boring now. A fellow campervan stopped to check we were ok and said they would alert the police at the next roadhouse 80km away in case we didn't make it by dark - Ok not the most positive attitude but reality.
Well we (Ricky) changed the tyre ( and remained calm) again and we did actually make it to the Roadhouse at Kulgera- the first and last one in the NT, where the campervan couple were 5mins off alerting the police. But we arrived there slowly but surely only to find out that it was the mechanics day off so we would have to stay here tonight. After a few VB's with this nice couple he came out with Ricky to look at tyres and pointed out that the ones that have gone have all been retreads and because of the heat the glue can't handle the temperatures so we must get re coils from now on !!!! Local Knowledge is great.

We found a shady spot and gave Stimpy a well earned break and settled in for the night with our Barossa Shiraz.

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Photos / videos of "Could there be a more UGLY town !!!!":

These are wild animals over here and even they struggle in the heat This is an very old sea bed which is now just salt Nikki's Driving / Chilling Ricky's cooking up a storm with such advanced cooking equipment Ugly Town Some one has been looking for opals
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