9a Coober Pedy - Roxby Downs - Streaky Bay

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Having left the boys behind, I did a few of the tourist attractions of Coober Pedy. This town is an interesting place and had definitely had it’s heyday. Now it is pretty run down and lots of drunk aborigines in the city centre shouting abuse to each other. The current situation with the aborigines in Australia is a tragic story and it’s shown very clearly here. I visited the typical tourist attractions including an underground historic home, modern home, old mining museum and underground church. I stayed a night at the underground campsite as I think this is just has to be done in my nerdy camping passion kind of way. 

I head south to a small purpose built mining town Roxby Downs to stay with a guy called Guy who I met on the Oodadatta Track a few weeks earlier. He is a miner in one of the biggest mines in Australia and I thought it would make an interesting place to go and see this town which is very much the opposite of Coober Pedy as this place has the highest average income in South Australia. The town is also like ‘a giant breeding machine’ with the highest birth rates in the country.  As the men go down the mines the women are at home with babies, what else is there to go when you are 300km from a major town? 

I went on the BHPBilliton mine tour and learned that this mine has the potential to be one of the biggest in the world. A few interesting facts I learned... 

1. the mine has underground taxis that take staff around to the various sites. Fancy that jobtitle; Underground Taxi Driver. 
2. over 7,500 pieces of clothing is washed everyday (that is a lot of staff, wonder if they iron them as well.? )
3. the underground cafe is called the Hard Rock Cafe. 
4. If the expansion was to go head which they mentioned, then this mine is to be the size of Sydney Harbor..... OMG, these guys definitely know how to mess with nature. To deal with the potential shortage of water for this mine whey would have to build one of the largest desalination plats of the world.

After a few days in Roxby, I continue through on the dirt tracks to Streak Bay where some of the best oysters in the world are farmed. I had a few lovely few days there just recovering from the outback journey. Guy joined me for a few days. We visited an oyster farm and went fishing and I caught a shovel head shark. As Guy knew the area well, he showed me around to some of the top spots around.  It was nice to not have to research an area and get shown around for a change.