To Coober Pedy

I hadn’t been back in Alice Springs an hour when Stewart said that he’d like to head down to a place near Coober Pedy to look for a legless lizard. We were driving back from the airport and I must say that I didn’t think much of it at the time. A round trip of 1400 kms is a long way to go just for a little lizard, even if it is a legless one. Despite the distance and my initial uneasiness about putting the kilometers on my car, I agreed to drive down there with Stewart.

It’s always interesting to go out with Stewart as you get to see some weird and wonderful creatures that you otherwise would not have even the slightest chance of seeing. These things you need to look for! The drive down there was long and tiring, but the passing scenery and the book on tape kept interested. It’s always amazing to see how the landscape changes. Around Alice Springs it is hilly with a few low trees. As one drives south the scenery changes into sand country with dunes and spinifex dominating the landscape. All too soon though this changes to rocky woodland then open plains with vast treeless expanses stretching across the horizon. Around Coober Pedy though the landscape gets even more unusual. There isn’t a tree to be seen anywhere on the land. Large heaps of dirt (left over from the opal mining) are piled everywhere with new ones being made every week means that it is a continually changing the landscape. These large heaps become the dominant feature. On an open plain with a few rocks lying around the place even a mouse walking across it would be the dominant feature. For that reason, Coober Pedy seems to be another world. The native Coober Pedians make it even stranger.

We stopped just outside Coober Pedy and had a poke around. After a bit of searching and a lot of swearing about the flies, we found the legless lizard that we were looking for. After taking a few photos we were on our way back into town for tea. It was a long but eventful day.

The next day we were up early with the hope of having a look around the town and surrounding landscape. Unfortunately it had rained overnight which made me a bit apprehensive about driving over the roads. We drove out along the main road that heads off to Oonadatta and stopped just after the dog fence. Driving along I could feel the mud sticking to the wheels of the car. When I got out and over to the dog fence to take a photo and then walked back to the car and had grown by two inches. I didn’t think driving to the ‘Moon Plains’ would be a smart idea. Especially in my car that, while I had every confidence in the vehicle, wasn’t equipped for off road travel. That’s the trouble with getting blow outs and being bogged in the work vehicles (which has happened quite a bit over the past couple of weeks). It makes one quite uneasy about taking a two wheel drive vehicle with road tyres on muddy corrugated roads. The high clearance doesn’t help with those sorts of drives. We didn’t get to see the ‘Moon Plains’. I don’t know how moon like they are (apparently it’s just a wide open are with small rocks everywhere) but it will have to be left for another trip. I think that if it hadn’t had rained I would have gone on it. The road wasn’t that bad just sticky. It wasn’t as bad as driving on black soil but it might have been further down the road. I didn’t want to risk it.

In the end Stewart seemed happy enough to carry on and even happier when we found a little dragon on our way back. That was another new tick for him (and me). It was a big drive as we arrived back in Alice Springs just as it was getting dark.