Odometer: 73,742
Up and gone by 8 am, first stop was Port Germaine to check out the 1.5 km jetty. It was pretty amazing. They had to build it that long in the 1800’s to get the wheat out to the waiting vessels. We walked right out to the end and back, getting a few steps on the ol’ garmin. Then it was a stop for fuel and coffee in Port Augusta and on to Coober Pedy. The landscape changed quite a lot along the way. I’ve no idea how the stations make a go of it as there doesn’t seem to be any feed or water to be seen for the stock they run. At some point I realised how interesting the scattered road signs had become – you’d see them looming in the distance, and there would be slight anticipation of what it was going to say. A break amongst a somewhat monotonous, and yet still pretty amazing landscape.
We stayed in an airbnb for the night as Bill and I were keen to experience sleeping underground. The dugout was really good. One of the rooms was dug out by hand, and the others by a tunnelling machine. We didn’t have a lot of time to explore Coober Pedy. We visited the underground Serbian Orthodox church and then popped in to the supermarket for a few supplies. We found kangaroo tails in the freezer. Lish. No potato cakes to be found. Bill has declared Coober Pedy to be a sh#thole and has decided there is no need for him to ever return. Seemed a pretty interesting place to me and I would have liked to spend a bit more time there.
Travelling the Big Island 