There isn’t much to see along the Stuart Highway, but then again there is heaps to see. With some 1600 km between Adelaide and Alice Springs there is a lot of land out there to look out. I left at 6:30am aboard a Groovy Grape Tour that makes the Adelaide to Alice Springs trek in 2 days with a stop for the night in Coober Pedy.
The landscape changes gradually as you leave Adelaide and venture into the outback with the terrain changing from green and big trees to smaller trees with swatches of grass and scrub. There is more plant life then I thought, but it still essentially amounts to a whole lot of nothing. We passed some large salt bed lakes, interesting rock formations and great views of the endless expanse. We pulled into Coober Pedy in time for a tour of an opal mine and an underground home. Coober Pedy is the Opal Capital of the world and 70% of the 3,000 population live underground (dug into the sides of mountains to be exact). The reason is simple: It gets hot out here. Homes in the hills have an average temp of 25 in the summer and 18 in the winter. I don’t know if I could live in a mountain, but seeing the homes was unique. If they want a new room they just start blasting to expand. They said that you can get a decent sized home for $40,000. Not bad! Somehow I managed to run the pool table at the only underground bar in the world as well this night. Odd, as I am pretty horrible most of the time at pool.
The next day we awoke at 6am to get on the road for the final push to Alice Springs. We took a short detour through the Breakaways, which is a vast plain of rock and dirt just outside Coober Pedy. It has been used for the filming of many a Hollywood blockbuster (i.e. Pitch Black, Red Planet and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). This venture also afforded us a look at the Dingo Fence, the longest fence in the world at some 5,320km. It’s purpose is to keep the dingos in the north out of the sheep grazing land in the south. Because of this fence there are few dingos in the southern half of Australia.
The drive up the middle was long but interesting and I’m glad I made the trip. The long days on the bus could have felt much longer in other situations. I wouldn’t do it again, but I reckon you have to do it once — otherwise you’d be hard pressed to meet Dinky the Singing Dingo!
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