On our fifth day we had a much longer drive to Coober Pedy so we quickly ate breakfast and packed up. Unfortunately we didn’t time our departure from Woomera very well. As you can see we had to wait for a while as a very long freight train went through.

Finally the last carriage passed and we followed the other waiting vehicles across the railway and up to the highway junction at Pimba where we turned right to drive north. It was pretty solid driving with a few stops to change driver and take the views at some of the rest points.

At Lake Hart we chose to drive on as the turn off was to the opposite side of the road. Didn’t realise that it was a massive lake and well worth seeing but managed to snap it as we drove by.

After driving for quite a while we stopped and ate lunch in our van at another rest area.

By mid afternoon we had reached Coober Pedy and checked in to the Opal Inn Caravan Park. Our allocated site, number 31 was quite near the amenities block and laundry and wasn’t as large as most we had stayed in previously. However, with some guidance from Karen, I backed in to a reasonably tight spot successfully. After unhitching and setting up we drove further into Coober Pedy township and had a look around. It was certainly dry and a dusty red to the eye. There were piles of dirt everywhere, evidence of lots of opal mining.

We stopped at the Catacomb Church for a brief look and decided as tomorrow was Sunday we would come back to visit for the church service.

Next up we went to one of the more famous attractions in town, Faye’s House. We were in luck and arrived about ten minutes before the last tour of the day. While we waited for the previous tour to finish we had the chance to see the garden, well suited to this dry arid region.

Our guide was a guy named Grant who had lots to tell us as he showed us down and around this amazing underground dwelling which Faye and two other female friends cut out of the rock over a ten year period. I’ll let some of my photos tell you the story.

If you look carefully at the top right of this bedroom photo you can see an air vent back to the surface.

It was a fascinating place and well worth a visit.

We returned to the caravan park just on dusk, beating a thunderstorm by minutes. It was the first rain in Coober Pedy for some time and settled the red powdery dust into a fine red mud.