Today was spent in Coober Pedy which, like a lot of other places that we have visited, turns out to be a rather fascinating place.

We started the day by booking into a caravan park with power and a washing machine. The power is to give our fridges a bit of a boost and the reason for the washing machine is to wash our sheets. Elaine does the day to day washing in buckets as we travel so that she reduces the need for a washing machine. This caravan park is part of an old mine and residence. If you wish to camp you can actually do so underground but caravans are above the ground. The owners residence, his office and the TV room are all underground. After doing the washing and showering we headed for town and went looking for a house, an underground house, that was open for tourists. However when we got there the owners were absent so we went 'noodling' on the next door paddock which was full of mine dirt. Noodling is the practise of going through the mine tailings looking for bits of opal that have been missed, a bit of a long shot I would think. Although I read somewhere that there are some local people who actually make a good living that way. Anyway we had a bit of fun but didn't find anything of interest. Following that we went off to do a tour and were lucky enough to be the only people on the tour. This tour showed us how the miners lived underground in the early days and what a modern underground home looks like. We also saw how the mining is done and had a very informative guide. Before leaving we went up to the lookout and were able to see the town, a reasonable size and busy, and spread around mines and underground residences.