The McKenzie's Official world tour site
# Sunday, 26 April 2009
Coober Pedy to Tennant Creek........

It was a long drive to Coober Pedy, in South Australia, but there was no choice in the miles covered if we wanted to stay in civilisation later that day! We really enjoyed the drive and we would have to disagree when people have said to us that the drive through the centre of Australia is a very long stretch with nothing to see! Yes – it is a very long distance – but it is certainly not filled with nothing!  It was great to see the changing colours within the scenery –a completely new world from anything we have ever seen before. We spotted plenty of Wedge-Tailed Eagles and the occasional Roo too!

The Stuart Range Campsite at Coober Pedy provided a welcome stop with an even more tempting swimming pool – it must have been hot as even I went in!! There was a very dusty and humid heat that could only be relieved by being in the water.

Coober Pedy is renowned for being the Opal Capital of the world and we went to explore. This mining town in the middle of desert has only had the luxury of television in the recent years. There has been no need for a television in a mining community. The desert has a stony and treeless landscape where anything would struggle to grow successfully. The town is surrounded by a moonscape landscape which is dotted with shafts, warning signs for the thousands of open mine shafts, and mullock heaps from the opal mining activities, which now extend to 40 kilometres around the township. Many of the town’s houses and other buildings have been built underground. It has a multi-cultural mining community where people live, work and enjoy their life underground!

We visited the Catacomb Church which developed from an old dugout and opened as an underground church in 1977. It has been cut out of the sandstone into the shape of a cross. The church was designed as, and remains today, a place to escape the harsh climate and to enjoy a quiet, cool and peaceful time.

The ‘Old Timers Mine ‘was fascinating as we took a self -guided tour. It was an original opal mine dating back to when it was hand dug in 1916. The shafts had been filled in, to hide the mine below. It had then been accidently re-discovered when an underground house extension broke through, revealing much precious opal – lots of which was left there for us all to see. We saw two undergrounds homes, with the mine running through, just next door and saw many seams of opal as it ran through the walls. Jemma and Ben had a go at ‘noodling’ or ‘fossiking’ and were very pleased with their finds – dedicated to the last- even in the extreme heat and the battle with the annoying  little flies that don’t take ‘no’ for an answer!

The Underground Cafe and Restaurant sounded like a novelty and so we decided to pay it a visit. It was also home to an enormous collection of unique and authentic didgeridoos, including the world’s largest didgeridoo! We only went in for a quick drink – however we came out with more than we had bargained for! We are happy to say that our didgeridoo and set of clap-sticks came from Coober Pedy and have now arrived safely back home to the UK! Phil was even given a lesson to discover how to get a sound out of this weird and wonderful instrument!

As we continued along our journey we passed the Dog (or dingo) Fence which is a surrounding fence to the north of Coober Pedy and this keeps the dingoes away from the other animals.  We had another long drive, covering 464 miles to reach Ayres Rock Campground, in the Northern Territory.

They were right! However many pictures of Uluru (Ayres Rock) we had seen, did not prepare us for the real thing – and the sense of the ancients spirits. Sat within the rich red plains in the centre of the desert, Uluru has a power all of its own. We were then in the red centre too, in the heart of the Australian outback and it was breath-taking once again!  The red rock bounced off a variety of magnificent fiery colours both at sunrise and sunset, with more different shades of blues and purples throughout the daytime hours.

The Anangu people are the traditional owners of Uluru and would like visitors to respect their wishes, culture and beliefs. They do not like people to climb the rock and they are saddened when people get injured or killed attempting the strenuous climb. Over 35 people have died on the climb. There are also sacred areas around the rock where it is forbidden to walk or to take photographs.

We were lucky enough to see the rock a number of times and to see the most unbelievable sunset. On the trip back to the camp the colours over the Olga’s (Kata Tjuta) created the most amazing skies that any of us have ever seen. The patterns and the variety of colours were stunning and we had to keep stopping for just one more photo!

We are very pleased to have experienced Uluru.......

Next we drove around to see the Ulgas and were able to walk up to the viewing point. The views were amazing and we were very grateful to use our latest purchase -of a hat each - WITH A FLY NET ATTACHED! This was a necessity – if you didn’t want a hundred flies up your nose and in your buzzing around your ears at the same time! It tried the patience of us all prior to using those hats! We had a laugh as we were walking back down to Aussie when a young couple were just getting out of their car and about to climb to the viewing point. Phil told them that they must be brave as they had no fly nets and they just said – ‘no worries – we are tough!’ We sat in Aussie and waited just a couple of minutes with the camcorder at the ready – and it was hilarious to see them trying to outrun the flies on their very quick decent back down to the bottom! Their gentle jog turned into a full blown sprint and we now understand the Aussie wave -as hands flap around people’s faces in a frantic style! We caught the moments on camcorder and thought how well they would fit with the Benny Hill music!!

We left The Rock behind and journeyed to Alice Springs. At the Stuart Caravan and Cabin Tourist Park Phil enjoyed some happy hours with a Danish chap called Tencars, who was excellent at English! We talked about when Macswayround was in Denmark, very near to the beginning of this trip and it feels like a life-time ago to us!

We went to visit the Royal Flying Doctors Headquarters and Visitor Centre at Alice Springs, to find out more about the work that this service does. This was an operational base until a few years ago and opened in 1939.  As you will be aware that we are fundraising for our county- Devon Air Ambulance, it was interesting to compare how this Australian service is operated. There are some helicopters used here around the coast for sea rescues, but aeroplanes are used for the flying doctor service, due to the expense, distances covered and the fact that there is plenty of open space to land a plane! We found out that the service is not only used for emergencies, but also to get a doctor to a remote place to hold a clinic. Patients will travel hundreds of miles to arrive in a place, on a certain day, if they know the doctor will be there. The service is also used to transfer patients between hospitals if more specialised help is required. The visitor centre is a non-profit making organisation with 100% of proceeds going towards replacement of medical equipment and aircraft. Each aircraft effectively functions as a flying intensive care unit. We watched an informative video and observed the coordination of medical evacuations and took a look around the interactive museum. Phil had a go at controlling the flight simulator and was pleased to take off, fly and land somewhere (even if it wasn’t on the run way!) He was very pleased with himself to land safely as this simulator is not a video game but a real simulation of a Pilatus P-C – 12 single engine aircraft and he has only ever had one flying lesson before! He had gathered quite an audience by the end of the 15 minute flight and received a round of applause when he landed!

At the Frontier Homestead, Jemma and Ben were very happy to have a camel ride! They shared the same camel and looked like the real thing as they trekked through the desert lands!

At the Didgeridoo centre along the Todd Mall, we all took the opportunity for a didgeridoo workshop! There were at least 60 of us all sat in rows trying to copy what was happening at the front!  This instrument looks so easy when it is played by an expert- but some of the noises our group were creating were extremely undesirable!

We enjoyed our time in Alice Springs, known around the world as Australia’s most famous outback town. It is celebrated for the natural beauty of its surrounding desert and location.

On the way to Tennant Creek we passed through the Barkly Region and saw the Devil’s Marbles. These massive granite boulders, piled on top of each other, were formed over millions of years. They are 4 metres high and 13 to 33 metres wide. The Aborigine theory is that the Devil’s Marbles are Rainbow Serpent Eggs.

NEXT STOP TENNANT CREEK!!

FACTOIDS-

·         Coober Pedy is situated 845 kilometres north of Adelaide and 690 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

·         Coober Pedy offers a unique experience as the world’s major supplier of opal. Its name comes from ‘Kupa Piti’ which in Aborigine means ‘white man’s hole in the ground’.

·         Opal was discovered in Coober Pedy in the early 1900’s by a 14 year old boy who was camping with his father’s gold prospecting party.

·         Coober Pedy has a population of approximately 3,500 people, which is made up of over 40 different nationalities.

·         The Opal is Australia’s National Gemstone.

·         Australia has 95% of the world’s supply of commercial opal and the largest percentage still comes from the 70 opal fields around Coober Pedy.

·         The ‘Olympic Australias ‘ found in 1965 in Coober Pedy, is said to be the world’s largest piece of uncut precious opal and weighs 3.5 kilograms. Its name comes from the fact that the piece was found in 1956 - the year the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, Australia.

·         Summer temperatures at Coober Pedy range from 35 degrees Celsius to 48 degrees Celsius in the shade. The annual rainfall is minimal at around 175mm (5 inches) per annum.

·         Road Trains are up to 53.5 metres long and 2.5 metres wide and have up to 3 trailers in this area. To pass safely you should be able to see at least one kilometre of clear road ahead of the road train!

·         Uluru measures 9.4 kilometres around its base and stands at 348 metres tall. Up close Uluru is very textured, with shapes and curves not usually captured in photographs or postcards.

·         Geologists say that another 6 kilometres of Uluru remains under the ground!

·         A Sacred Site means a site that is Sacred to Aboriginal people or is significant according to their tradition. It can include trees, hills, rocks and springs.

·         Kata-Tjuta (the Olgas) is a collection of 36 rock domes, with Mount Olga being the tallest, at 457 metres high.

·         Kata-Tjuta means ‘many heads’ in the local indigenous language and is in the Uluru-Kata -Tjuta National Park.

·         Kata-Tjuta is also of great spiritual significance to the Anangu people and is protected to the point that no indigenous stories from the site have been shared with visitors.

·         Kata-Tjuta is estimated to be 500 million years old.

·         Archaeological work suggests that Aboriginal people have lived in the area for at least 22,000 years.

·         The FIRST Royal Flying Doctor Base was established in Cloncurry, Queensland, in 1928 (although it is now re-located to Mount Isa).

·         Today, Alice Springs, together with Port Augusta and Adelaide, combine to provide the three operating bases that make up the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) Central Operations- which covers the Northern Territory and South Australia. In addition the RFDS also operates medical facilities in Tennent Creek in the Northern Territory, and Marree in South Australia.

·         The area covered has a radius of 600kms from Alice Springs. This area can be covered in approximately one and a half hours.

·         The RFDS now has 22 bases nationally and also operates 4 medical facilities. Today, the crews cover 80% of the Australian continent and there are 51 aircraft in operation.

·         This year it is estimated that the RFDS will make 250,000 patient contacts across Australia – that is one new patient every two minutes, which indicates the vital importance to ‘keep the flying doctor flying.’

·         Former Prime Minister of Australia, the late Sir Robert Menzies, once said that the Flying Doctor Service represented the ‘greatest single contribution to the effective settlement of the far distant back country that we have witnessed in our time....’

·         In Alice Springs, there is a School of the Air which covers approximately 502,000 square miles (1,300,000 square kilometres) making it the world’s largest classroom! It was established in 1951 to provide a much needed education resource to children living in remote Central Australia. At that time it was the only one if its kind in the world and HF radio was the mode of communication for school lessons. Today, high tech computer technology is used to provide an interactive education service, across the miles.

·         The Devil’s Marbles are 393kms North of Alice Springs and 1 hour south of Tennant Creek.

 

 

MORE AUSTRALIAN WILDLIFE HITS:

 

·         White –backed Magpies

·         Starlings

·         Bell Minors

·         Little Pied Cormorant

·         Welcome Swallows

·         Fairy Martins

·         Superb Blue Orange Bellied Parrot

·         White Winged Chough

·         Musk Lorikeet

·         Grey Strike Thrush

·         Orange Bellied Parrot

·         Huntsman Spider

·         Wolf Spider

·         Buzzards

·         Eastern Rosellas

·         Singing Honey Eater

·         Guanas

·         Nankeen Kestrel

·         Emus

·         Fantail Willy Wagtail

·         Masked Wood Swallow

·         Magpie Larks

·         Spinifex Pigeon

·         Butcher Bird

·         Pied Butcher Birds

·         Red Winged Parrots

·         Port Lincoln Parrots

·         Green Budgies

·         Zebra Finches

·         White Necked Herons

 

 

 

 

 


Sunday, 26 April 2009 15:34:47 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Comments [0]  Australia