Day 8-10 Into the Outback

On Saturday, we left the comfort of the city and fine hotels and headed north, leaving the ocean for the outback. It is a long and lonely road, not a lot of traffic. It very much reminds us of any long lonely road in the great basin But look at the trucks- they are called road trains, and you can see why.

We have seen quite a few  emus and kangaroos.

We arrived at Andamooka, an old opal mining town, nothing touristy, simply an old dying mining town, think Park City in the 1950 time frame.

 The “Welcome” sign is a pretty cool collection of large “painted lady” opals. They are called painted ladies because they are really beautiful on the surface, but only paper thin, with worthless sandstone underneath, just like a “painted lady”.

Opal was discovered here in about 1931. At the top of the rush in the 1960’s, there were about 3000 folks here, but not there are only about 300.   The landscape looks like a moonscape. Maybe that is why Mad Max from Thunderdome was filmed here.

They have preserved the original “Main Street”, a row of dugouts.

 We met some of the old time miners (Murray’s partners), they showed us around. We worked a mine for most of the day, and didn’t find much of anything, but today, while “noodling” the dumps, we found a few really nice pieces. One of them will be worth several hundred when cut. Cyndy found a particularly pretty opal.

We went underground into an old mine to see how it was done. There aren’t many active operations now.
Andamooka was a really pleasant stay, nice folks, and a few opals to boot.  On to Coober Pedy tomorrow.