Days 20 to 23 : A last look at Coober Pedy + Port Augusta and Whyalla

On Saturday we took a town and Breakaways tour with Jimmy, a greek former opal miner, marathon runner, movie extra and Tina Turner minder. Needless to say he had plenty of good stories to tell. The highlights were driving through the mining claims, picking up opal chips, the eccentricity of Crocodile Harry's underground home, the beauty of the Breakaways and seeing the glitter of gypsum over the moon plains in the afternoon sunlight.

We spent Sunday walking around Coober Pedy trying to dodge the heat of the day and the omnipresent flies. In between fly swats we managed to see movie set left overs such as flying saucers, underground churches and the Old Timers Mine. One amusing sight was a metal tree built by an Italian miner when his kids wanted a tree to climb - it was cheaper to build one out of steel than keep the water up to a live tree. Seeing the small seams of opal left in the Old Timers Mine clearly demonstrated the luck needed to be successful in opal mining - the phrase shearching for a needle in a hatstack comes to mind.

On Monday we farewelled Coober Pedy and drove straight through to Port Augusta. The road was a good one and the trip was easily done. We had a laugh when we saw a lone walker pulling a cart on his way to Coober Pedy with still many miles to go and no civilisation within a days walk in any direction.

Today we took all day to do 140 klms.  We visted the Arid Lands Botantic Gardens, the Red Cliff lookout and the Wadlata Outback Centre in Port Augusta. We spent a couple of hours in the outback centre looking at the geological, indigenous and settler histories of South Australia. We then headed for Whyalla with a detour to Fitzgerald Bay and Point Lowly where the white sand, turquoise and deep blue waters was such a contrast to the red dirt and blue sky of the outback. Before setting up camp we toured the main sights of Whyalla; the views from Hummock Hill lookout, and the foreshore. Our campsite in the Whyalla Foreshore Caravan Park is one of the best we have stayed in - the back of the van is 2 metres from the sand and we have absolute ocean views for the princely sum of $34.20 a night.

We are already making changes to our itinerary after hearing about the beauty of South Australia's Yorke Peninsula and Marian Bay in particular. We hope to speed up the Nullarbor crossing to give us a couple of extra days to see the peninsula. This is all dependent on the water tank repairs and the time it takes for spare parts to arrive in Port Lincoln.