Women Over Fifty

To me Coober Pedy sounded like a fantasy.  Mining for opals underground and living there as well?  You’ve got to be kidding.  I put it on my list of places to visit when we traveled to Australia.

So, our Best Western host picked us up and took us to his underground motel.  Uh Oh!  I was going to be living underground myself?  I had some misgivings until we drove up to the motel.  It looked - - - interesting.

Our host explained that the same rock grinders they used in the mines were used to dig holes into the side of the cliff to use as hotel rooms.  The holes in the left of the picture are waiting for future expansion.  Our motel room/apartment is about the center of the picture where the car is.  We had two bedrooms, a sitting-dining room, a kitchen and a bathroom.  The kitchen and bathroom were in the front, our host explained so it was easy to bring in water and sewer.  The entrance to the room was shaded.  It was comfortably cool inside.

I had been mostly awake all night.  I didn’t quibble.  I ate my breakfast and crashed in one of the bedrooms.  I woke up hungry and roaring to see this place.  Unfortunately, the restaurants were a good walk downtown.  Our host drove us there and promised to pick us up later.  Sorry, I don’t remember what I ate.

Some of the shopping was above ground, but a large percentage of it was underground like our hotel.  There was a large underground hotel that looked posh and I supposed it was.  Inside there were corridors lined with shops.  Residents here didn’t even have to go outside in the heat!

Something was nagging me as I returned outside.  Was that a path leading up over the hotel?  Indeed it was.  I followed the path to the top of the hill where I could see all the vents and things for the hotel.  You see, the thing that keeps the indoor living areas comfortable is a system of vents up to the surface.  Underground there is always a pleasant flow of air and these vents are the reason it works.

The vents showing in the picture belong to that hotel.  Isn’t that something!

I also toured a home while I was in town.  A couple would show their home for a few dollars.  They seemed to love showing me around.  Like our hotel, the bathroom and kitchen were in the front.  Unlike my hotel, their house stretched along the front edge of the rock, being inside the rock, but close enough to the outdoors to allow for windows cut into the rock.  I wasn’t tempted to have one like it, but it was nice being able to see where people lived.

We took a tour of the opal mines.  I wanted to see how they dug the opals out of the ground.  Having been underground several times already, I was wanting to see a place where work was still going on.  The next picture shows the tunnels of an opal mine.

We entered this one from ground level.  We also saw just holes with ladders leading down indicating that there was a working mine in that hole.  It must be a problem trying to not fall in with all those holes dotting the landscape.

Our guide pointed out how essential it was to leave supports for the rock above you.  He said that no matter if you saw a huge chunk of opal  buried in those supports you couldn’t dig it out or you risked having the roof cave in on you.  After that I imagined untold riches hiding in those supports.  They have a formula for deciding where to leave the supports and how big around they should be.

We also saw a mine where the miner was living in the spaces he’d already mined out.  He had lots of rooms, some cunningly shaped and decorated by his own hand.  The wall paintings and decorations left me wondering if he’d inhaled too much opal dust.  He was good hearted about letting us wander about in his tunnels though.

At the end of the tour we were allowed to go through some mine tailings and look for opals.  Our guide told us what to look for and said we had permission to scavenge.  My sensible brain told me that tourist groups dug in these tailings daily, but the other part of my brain wondered if I could find something others had left behind. 

You can see by the picture that my fellow lookers were equally intrigued.

I found a handful of white chips with “color” on them which I saved carefully and still have.  They wouldn’t make jewelry.  They’re useless as anything but a memory, but I found them in Coober Pedy and I treasure them.

We saw loads of opal in all sorts of shapes and colors in the shops in Coober Pedy.  I was on overload.  I wanted some opal to take home, but I was overwhelmed by my choices.  In one shop a huge chunk of amber to gold opal sat unprotected on a glass counter.  We are talking humongous!  I asked the shop keeper if he wasn’t afraid someone would take it.  He asked me “Are you going to pick it up and run with it?  If so, where are you going to run?  We could pick you up before you died in the desert - if we wanted to.”  There was no way I could lift that opal, no way to hide it, no way to get it home, unless I wanted to buy it and have it shipped home. 

By the time we left for Ayres Rock (Uluru) I had bought some opal and left it with a jeweler to be made into jewelry and shipped to me at home.  I loved that I could design it myself and they would make it as requested.  I also had my little bottle of opal chips with me.

We left once more in a Pioneer bus filled with a new set of back packers.  This time we were the ones that got on to ride.

Marilynne

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