{"id":26616,"date":"2011-03-28T18:09:27","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T22:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/26616\/great-australia-road-trip-page-eleven\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T16:44:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:44:52","slug":"great-australia-road-trip-page-eleven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/26616\/great-australia-road-trip-page-eleven\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Australia Road Trip \u2013 Page Eleven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 11 – Sunday – September 26, 2010<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Weather:\u00a0 Sunny & Hot<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Destination:\u00a0 Erldunda, Northern Territory, Australia<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Odometer Reading:\u00a0 99015<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Total Distance Traveled:\u00a0 3672 kilometers (2281 miles)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Price of Fuel:\u00a0 Coober Pedy – $1.43.9 liter, 47.64 liters, $68.56; Marla – $1.60.5 liter, 44.52 liters, $71.45<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Route Taken:\u00a0 Coober Pedy to Marla to Kulgera to Erldunda<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Highlights:\u00a0 We woke up with the sun today.\u00a0 It\u2019s bright, clear, a little breezy, but it’s starting to get desert hot now.\u00a0 Not good for sleeping late since this rolling box we\u2019re living in heats up pretty good once the sun hits it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Before we left Coober Pedy we walked around town a bit.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what exactly we were expecting, but we were a little disappointed with what we could see.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, it\u2019s an interesting place as all mining towns are, but it wasn\u2019t what we thought it was going to be.\u00a0 Maybe if we had reached it during the week it would have been different.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Since it was Sunday, the underground churches were busy with services and the rest of the underground attractions in town were marked with \u201cClosed\u201d signs.\u00a0 I think we\u2019re either here too early for the \u201ctourist season\u201d or it\u2019s just too early (10:00 a.m.?) for Sunday morning.\u00a0 The only underground place that we could go into was the gift shop at the Opal Cave.\u00a0 It was a cave in the side of a hill that was civilized with electricity, flooring and store fixtures.\u00a0 The deepest we had to walk down into it was two steps.\u00a0 The others places may go deeper underground than the Opal Cave gift shop, but since we couldn’t get into any of them, we couldn\u2019t find out.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The rest of Coober Pedy (the above ground stuff) looked like most other old mining towns we\u2019ve seen.\u00a0 We did a little shopping at the stores that were open as we walked through town.\u00a0 You just can\u2019t pass up Coober Pedy opals.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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There were also the quirky things.\u00a0 I got a shot of the Opal Beetle, another of the big icons, although it\u2019s really not that big.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Then there was this thing which looked like a space vehicle from Star Wars, but what it actually was, we have no clue.\u00a0 The lady in the gift shop didn\u2019t know either.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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We headed out of Coober Pedy and I grabbed a shot of their town sign.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Right outside of town, the highway travels through the mining fields that surround the town.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty dangerous place, with warning signs, tailing piles and drill holes everywhere.\u00a0 Some of the drill holes go down 30 meters (98 feet) or more and they’re not necessary secured or marked in any way to let people know where they are exactly.\u00a0 Walk in the wrong direction and you can just disappear down one of those holes.\u00a0 We decided an up close and personal viewing would be unnecessary.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The drive was a long stretch of flat, red desert from horizon to horizon, broken only by the highway, a few trees and stubby plants.\u00a0 I know that sounds like a redundant copy and paste of yesterday’s sights (which it is), but so is the landscape here.\u00a0 We stopped for a stretch at a nice little spot and I grabbed a couple of Outback flora shots.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Stops:\u00a0 After Coober Pedy, photo ops, diesel and stretch stops were the only things on the agenda again today.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Where We Stayed:\u00a0 We stopped a little earlier in the day today when we got to Erldunda, which is at the junction with the road to Ayer’s Rock.\u00a0 We checked into the Erldunda Desert Oaks Resort & Caravan Park which is an older, but nice, stopping place.\u00a0 They have a fairly new motel, a store, a tavern, gas and a campground with huge trees and spacious sites.\u00a0 Our space was $28.00 for the night and after we got The Beast parked and settled into our space, we headed to the tavern for dinner.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Where We Ate: Dinner was the seafood combo platter for him and the special of the night (Barramundi) for me.\u00a0 It was really good and went down well with a couple of Cruisers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 11 – Sunday – September 26, 2010 Weather:\u00a0 Sunny & Hot Destination:\u00a0 Erldunda, Northern Territory, Australia Odometer Reading:\u00a0 99015 Total Distance Traveled:\u00a0 3672 kilometers (2281 miles) Price of Fuel:\u00a0 Coober Pedy – $1.43.9 liter, 47.64 liters, $68.56; Marla – $1.60.5 liter, 44.52 liters, $71.45 Route Taken:\u00a0 Coober Pedy to Marla to Kulgera to Erldunda […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,42,25],"tags":[651,2749,2801,2432,2800,2431],"class_list":["post-26616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-other","category-photography","category-world","tag-australia","tag-coober-pedy","tag-mining","tag-motorhome","tag-outback","tag-road-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116521,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26616\/revisions\/116521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}