Outback Wanderers: Day 19: Outback South Australia

December 3, 2010

If in my lifetime there comes the opportunity to travel to the moon, I won’t feel compelled to go. The South Australian outback offers a similar terrain. The Mad Max movies were apparently filmed here, depicting life on earth after the “final doom” and the end of civilization. You get the picture.

Heading towards Coober Pedy on the Stuart Highway, the landscape is flat and sparsely vegetated with ankle high shrubs. Thirty kilometers from town mounds of sand start to appear, increasing in numbers the closer we get to town. The ants must be hard at work here. Or in Coober’s case: opal miners.

Coober Pedy is known for two things: opals and underground houses. Every third shop in the one main street advertises something to do with opals – gemstones, jewelry, fossicking – or underground buildings – an underground hotel, restaurant, B&B, even a Catholic church. This truly is a version of the wild west, with ‘opal fever’ swooning through the streets. If I thought Alice was mad, this takes the prize.

Like Alice, Aboriginals wander the streets and crouch in the parks and curbsides. But they don’t look as well cared for as in Alice Springs – neither does the town for that matter. I pass by a group on my walk towards the underground church. Four men and a woman, all old, or at least looking it, are leaning up against a concrete circular statue. The man sitting on top calls out to me, “Hey you, come ‘ere.” I wave and start to walk past. “You, missus, come ‘ere,” he says waving me over. I turn and walk over to the group. He holds out his hand, cackles a cryptic greeting. I take his hand; “How’s it going?” He doesn’t let go of my hand and with his other hand he pats his belly. “Wonderin’ if you had anyting toweet,” he says. “Purdy hungry in ‘ere.” I pull my hand away and shake my head. “Sorry, I don’t have anything on me.” The woman sitting at my feet has on colourful worn clothing, a mop of rust coloured hair and a grotesque black growth just inside her toothless open mouth. She nods when I say, “Pretty hot out here today.” “Yeah, purdy ‘ot idiz,” and her head continues to bob while I walk away.

The heat is indeed intense again -- 38˚ in mid-afternoon. There’s little shade in the treeless town but we find a small patch of green grass near a kids’ playground on the edge of town. We have lunch and print out the documents we need to send off to the Internal Revenue Service in Philadelphia. Later, I buy an International Express Post envelope at the post office and wonder whether I’ve just raised a red flag to the IRS. What’s this? She hasn’t submitted a tax return since 1987? After her, boys. Considering I have no Australian tax records beyond seven years (the time our tax office requires to keep them), I imagine a huge headache if they decide to prosecute. Ignorance of the law won’t get me far when dealing with the Tax Man.

We cut through the south end of town to have a look at the underground Orthodox Church. It’s truly spectacular, cut deep into the side of a rock hill, with curved ceilings and statues of Elijah and Moses carved straight into the side of the rock. Surrounding the church the landscape resembles a mining site, a quarry or a rubbish dump – mounds of gravel and rock and rubbish everywhere. At every rock mound, the façade of a house is set against the rock face, the interior of the house jutting into the rock. On the top of the rock mound various pipes stick out, letting in (or out) air and possibly light. We’re told the rock “underground” houses maintain a steady 25˚ temperature year round.

We head east on an unsealed road 10kms south of town. We’re taking a 500km sidetrack through the South Australian outback to see Lake Eyre in bloom. The land quickly turns desolate and extremely flat -- it’s good to be in the wild again.