Coober Pedy 24th-27th March

Ben in front of his future Holiday house

What can I say about this town but to admit that I must have the only 9 year old in Australia who would like to have a summer house there!!!

Who wants that???

Of all the places in Australis he wants it here? Nobody tell me I don't have an incredibly imaginative child who just happens to be a square peg in a round hole kind of world :o)

I guess it was kinda interesting. Opals just aren't my thing. Much to the dismay of Ben. He just couldn't understand why I didn't love them as much as him.

Kasper and Molly took up the cause though and tried to have the same passion even if it was in a diluted form.

We did the rounds of just about every opal shop, tried the 'award winning' pizza and stayed a little longer on leaving day to visit SA's No. 1 tourist attraction, “ The Old Timer's Mine”.

Old Timers Mine

Croatian Man living in
Coober Pedy for 42 years

We met a lovely Croatian man who the kids took a liking to. He was very friendly and gave them pieces of 'opal' he had lying around his shop.

These lumps were added to the already growing pile of what we now know as potch- completely worthless but opal none-the-less.

Underground Campground

Beam up to Star Trek
Space Ship

We chose to stay at a campground were we could sleep underground!! You could pitch your tent in one of the rooms which they had extivated from the rock and enjoy the coolness after a hot, sunny day over head. Problem for us was that the ground was stinking hard we couldn't bang a peg in to save ourselves. No worries, we can just pop our stretches up and sleep au natural. Small problem again- mossies!! Buzzing around your head like a lawn mower all night and, although not an issue for me, spend part of their night sucking your blood!

Solution- $75 worth of trendsetting army green hats with nets attached and a dose of mossie repellent applied each night. But we slept underground like the miners do!!

The camping-ground also had a mine which you could do a tour of so on our second night we donned our hats and learnt all about how to dig for opals.

Noodling for Opals

After a miner has burrowed his way through rock and dirt looking for his opal he is left with huge piles of the leftover debris. It is in this pile that tourists begin an activity known as noodling; scratching and sifting through the rocks and pebbles on the lookout for an elusive opal.

For the most part the mounds are full of potch but if you are patient and lucky you may find the odd bit of colour too.

Next to Dog Fence

Taking a break from the dusty town we drove north towards The Breakaways; a group of beautifully coloured rock formations.

As we drove out we met up with the Dog Fence. 5600Kms of wire erected to keep the dogs out of the sheep country of the south. It was quite amazing to imagine how long the fence actually was. When we got out on the north side to do the obligatory photographs Ben was so nervous that we would be attacked by some roaming dingo he wanted us to hurry up and get back into the car. Funny kid.

Salt and Pepper / Two Dogs (Rock Formations)

The Breakaways themselves were a spectacular site.. So named as they appear, from a distance, to be a 'breakaway' from the Flinder's Ranges. It is a site that is special to the aborigines and they had described several of the stories attached to particular hills, such as the two dogs, which was very interesting.

Despite having showers on a daily basis I was hot, sticky and dusty for a great deal of my time in Coober Pedy and was looking forward to seeing a patch of green grass. Nobody else in the family seemed to mind how uncomfortable it was so maybe it was just a mummy thing :o)

Driving down dirt roads in the Breakaways

Vis Breakaway To Coober Pedy på et større kort

someones backdoor

The Opal Bug

Tunneling Machine

Road Train

Narrow-Banded Sand Swimmer [Eremiascincus fasciolatus] in the Camp Kitchen

Self explaining

Even bookshops are underground

Salt Lake

Vis Melrose To Coober Pedy på et større kort

A none scientific way of finding opals

Scene from "Mad Max" movie?

Long way from home

New Moon over Coober Pedy

Yacka 19th - 21st March

We left Hahndorf about 11am without too many issues. It still surprises me however, how long it takes us to pack up even when we haven't fully unpacked. Guess some things will always remain a mystery :o)

The trip was uneventful apart but was punctuated with a stop at an auto shop to pick up some bits and bobs.

After a couple of hours, we arrived at our destination...Yacka. Population 90!!

Our arrival had raised the total amount by almost 6%

The town, you can imagine, is quite small infact, it took Rasmus 9 minutes & 3 second to ride from one end of town and back again. I think I could do that trip :o)

The camping place is quite pretty with some amazing mosaic picnic tables which the town's residents have created and it is very clean so that is good enough for us.

We pottered around in the last few hours of the day. Setting up camp, playing in the playground, watching a bit of TV.

The next day we spent most of the morning catching up on some school work. It got to hot for me to do any thing so we hung around the caravan again sewing, reading and eating.

It has been a very lazy couple of days but so nice.

The most activity we did was shave the boys hair! And when I say 'we' I mean 'Rasmus'. He finally conned Ben into cutting his lovely long hair for $20!!!! (Was it wrong of me to tell Ben he had prostituted his hair?) Then at the last moment Kasper chirped up he needed a cut too. He always gets it shaved but nobody told me about HOW short it would be!! Good thing he is cute and can get away with it :o)

Despite the 35oC day we had had I woke up in the middle of the night to rain. I got up to check if everything was water tight but in the morning when we were packing up I realised that the roof bag had been left open so we had to drag the camping stuff out to dry it before we repacked it again.

But the biggest thing to happen on this day was my hubby's birthday :o)

I had been nagging him about what he would like but he couldn't think of anything so we finally agreed that having a year off from work was birthday present enough.

We had a nice lunch at Stonehut to celebrate. A lady we had meet told us of the best sausage rolls she had ever eaten so we thought it was worth a visit and the lovely setting in a small vineyard made it worth it too.

We even managed a birthday cake for dinner at the new camping-ground we arrived in.

Happy birthday Rasmus xxxx

Vis Hahndorf to Yacka på et større kort

Hahndorf 16 -19th March

In the following Julie writes in Purple and Rasmus writes in Pink

Autumn approaching

A bit of Germany

I had really wanted to visit Hahndorf as I had been here as a child and was looking forward to revisiting my childhood memories. Problem was I didn't recognise a thing! What had they done to the place? Or perhaps it was that my childhood was further into my past than I cared to admit!

So, it was to a new town we would all explore together.

Hasbrown breakfast

Birthday G+rl

First things first though. The 17^th March means more to us than just St Paddy's Day. Our little princess has a birthday- and we celebrated her 5^th this year. Imagine only 5 years ago this little treasure come into all of our lives. We helped to begin the celebrations with a few pressies and her favourite brekkie-hasbrowns and bacon. Then a trip into the quaint little town.

Amazingly, the first shop we came to was an op-shop; our fav.

We found Molly 2 little dresses (coz she doesn't have enough of those) and some hand knitted doll's clothes to add to her birthday collection.

We wandered from each shop to the next imagining all the things we would buy and reminding the children (on a fairly regularly basis) about the joys of windowing shop.

Slikkepind

The highlight for them was the lolly shop as finally they got a 'yes' from us and set to task in choosing from the huge range. Much discussion was had as well as toing and froing between the bright coloured bags. Finally decisions were made. Ben settle on a box of jelly beans he'd had his eye on for weeks but was very disappointed and we came close to tears.(I gave him my fudge to compensate coz that's the sort of mother I am) Molly has taken several licking sessions to finish off her love heart lolly-pop. Kasper eats his all a once. Funny kids.

German beer & spegepølse

We bought lunch in a German inspired deli and sat outside to enjoy our picnic and Molly's birthday lunch. We watched as others tucked into huge platters of sausage, potatoes, sauerkraut and the hugest glasses of German beer you have ever seen. Rasmus and I had a small :oP

Cheers

Molly was also allowed to choose another gift and although she had been talking about getting a tu-tu (for the ballet practice) there were no such shops in Hahndorf, so she settled on a handbag. 

Later that night we had Molly's party with bowls of chips, pink biscuits and home-made mini burgers. Topped of with a pink cream birthday cake.

Mini Burgers

She claimed it was the best birthday ever which is always nice to hear.

The next day Rasmus was taking the kids to the Adelaide museum and I was to remain home to study-lucky me :o)

Did you know that on the bus in SA you can get 2 free kids ticket with an adult and under 5 travel free? Rasmus' bright idea was to give the boys the free tickets and say that Molly was 4, so she could also travel for free. Are you out of your mind? Did you know that she had turned 5 the day before!!! She wasn't telling anybody that she was 4 even if it did mean a free ticket. So in they trouped together.

Rosseta Stone

Ben photographed all the
rock displays in the museum
approx 30 shots in total 

Hindmarsh Square

As Julie can't do any reporting, since she stayed behind, I take over for now.

Adelaide is one on those cool cities where public transports timetables are integrated into Google Maps so finding your way around is super easy. Trip was forty-eight minutes; first through hills and then freeway downhill; 600 to 50 meters above sea in 4 km. Going to be interesting with the caravan in a few days!

View Larger Map

Adelaide was abuzz with Lycra Lizards as some kind of bicycle event was on. In the hills the bus driver was challenged by them every 10 meters.

We grabbed a few freebees like hot cross buns and energy drinks as the bus stopped right where the whole event was finishing - it saved our snacks for Ron and Arthur.

Opalized fossil room

old shopping arcade

Our quest was to find the Museum where Benjamin had heard about an octopus on display that was four stories high.

It turned out to be the South Australia Museum and at first glace it looked terrific. It turned out to be the best one I've even been to, IMO, and, as a bonus, it is free.

We spent almost 3 hours looking at the displays and then had a very late lunch.

Judging by the children's lack of asking for food the whole time in there, I think the kids enjoyed it a lot.

I also managed to get hold of a an Aboriginal map of Australia's pre-invasion tribal division-it's fascinating!

We had a stroll down the main shopping mall which also seemed a lot more appealing than the equivalent one in Melbournesia.

relaxing

rulletrappe

Molly had what it seemed to be her first encounter with an escalator and couldn't get herself to take the first step onto it.

Had my first hands-on look at a Kindle Touch, and are now happy it came later to the Australian market as it is so clumsy because of it's increased thickness and weight.

Kids had a play in a park before the bus ride home. 
Once home, we had a dip in the pool and bbq for tea and Benjamin played Minecraft online with Anton

jumping

running on water

Playing Minecraft with Anton

View Rapid Bay to Hahndorf and places we were in a larger map