We spent four days in the Burra area and we found it quite
an interesting experience. Burra is fascinating – the site of a very rich
copper mine that ran out of copper and closed in 1877 – it attracted Cornish
miners and Welsh smelters. They built solid stone houses of quality and style
and they have been preserved very well. Those that had no house carved out
dugouts in the creek bank and a few of these are also on display. The locals
have developed a self-guided tour of the sights and the museums, which we
embarked upon. The first museum was at the old mine itself and the guide, a
middle-aged guy in a striped shirt and earring in one ear gave us the spiel. It
was a long tour – we stopped for lunch in the middle of it and then resumed at
another museum in the town itself. The guide, a middle-aged guy in a striped
shirt and earring in one ear gave us the spiel? Was there a little too much
in-breeding happening in Burra? No, same guy apparently, but it was a little
bit of a shock when he stamped our tickets.
It were only dugout in creek bank but it were 'ome to'us
Burra is close to the Clare Valley wine area so naturally we
just had to take a peek. It was a rainy old day so we stopped in at Clare for a
coffee, picking a cafe at random. We walked in and stood at the counter for
quite a while. There was a big fat guy at the coffee machine making movements
that resembled a barrista under sedation. He turned his head towards us, smiled
nicely and said “Won’t be long”. Minutes passed – nothing. I thought “It will
be long”, but then an efficient looking lady strode up to us and took our
orders. As I walked away I happened to notice that the lady placed our order at
the end of a metre long queue, next to the barrista. “It will be long”, I
thought. We took advantage of this by venturing out into the town and buying
provisions, including a range of sausages from yet another championship
sausage-maker – every bluddy town has one! (These sausages were very good
though, might I say). We came back to the cafe – no coffee – so Tom and Marg went
and bought their provisions while we waited in vain hope that the barrista had
finished his shift and someone competent had stepped in. That didn’t eventuate
but we did eventually get our coffee (what? You want me to tell you it was good
coffee? It wasn’t).
By the way, and it may surprise our South Australian
friends, one of the provisions that we bought was a little knob of cold meat sausage
called Fritz, which is peculiarly SA. Now this may surprise our non-South
Australian friends, but I quite liked it! I’m a Fritz fan and may become a
Fritz fiend if I’m not careful.
Our next destination was Woomera – about 400 km north. The
country changes starkly once you leave Port Augusta and as you go further north
you can imagine why no one had the slightest remorse about bombing, strafing,
rocketing and nuking the joint. It is just so flat and desolate. There were some decent displays of old rockets
we used to know (who can forget the Blue Streak Project that practically
crippled Great Britain financially for no result) and great Aussie developments
with great Aussie names like Ikara, Malkara and Jindivik (although that does
sound a little Norwegian when one thinks about it). My brother Thomas had his own missile attack
of sorts when he came down with a sudden stomach upset that laid him low for a
day. This delayed our travels while he recovered but we then pressed on to the
opal town of Coober Pedy – 370 km further north again.
Now I would doubt if Coober Pedy has ever made the
semi-finals in the Tidy Towns Competition. It’s kind of a mass of holes and
mounds and every bit of machinery that has ever broken down is still in
someone’s front yard. Obviously it works
for some though and there are about 2000 people living under and above ground,
searching for the elusive opal. People must become addicted to finding this
rock as they stay forever and the payoffs seem low when you ask. Everybody’s
broke but everybody’s buying expensive mining machinery to add to the stuff
that’s in their front yards.
The land is so flat around here that we’re going to have to
move on to see the really big rock – Uluru.
The Big Nuthin'...Down on Desolation Row
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