Woke up,snapped our heels together chanting ’there’s no place like home’ and found we were back from Oz and still standing. The wind died down around midnight, leaving the tent a bit skewiff but still in one piece – 3 cheers for solid construction!

By 8am we had Dora back in her box and were ready to go.

A relatively short drive today (about 120km) to Andamooka via Roxby Downs.

Both these towns are mining towns but couldn’t be more different. 

Roxby was founded in the late 80s by BHP Billiton when they built the Olympic Dam. It largely services miners and their families. It’s well supported with schools/amenities/shops with a central cafe (although coffee pretty unremarkable). All around is absolute desert.

Andamooka is a different cup of tea altogether- an opal mining town where miners have come to make their fortune. The lady in the post office come museum come gift shop told us that  opal mining is more an obsession than a lucrative pastime.

Highlights of the town are the original row of historic cottages – dugouts really, carved into the rock face and the bottle house constructed solely from used beer bottles.

Actually even the non historic homes are pretty rudimentary here- lots of corrugated iron dwellings set amongst the big white mounds of opal diggings.

Lots of old machinery etc lying around.

Pub is closed- nobody seemed to know why or til when, but the IGA had a stock of frozen foods including ice creams! So armed with the two staples in life- a Magnum each and Bundaberg ginger beer we felt pretty happy.

The camp ground here is a big red expanse – a park anywhere and pay by an honour box affair – at 4 bucks per person per night it’s the cheapest accomodation by far. Showers are hot and immaculately clean.

David learning to suppress his inner Kiwi and becoming (kind of) used to the 50 million flies that are buzzing around- but we haven’t eaten yet…..

Winds are picking up here so I think we are in for another big night, however in this park we have been able to angle the van to minimise resistance and so far so good- we have the awning  up and so far it’s holding but we have a plan for if we need to do a quick buckle down.

It’s a hot and dry 30 degrees here today, so at least the breeze is keeping us cool.

We had intended to spend 2 nights here but have pretty much seen all there is to see, so are going to pack up and head off tomorrow- haven’t yet decided where to.