South Australia: Sleeping in Celebrity Funk − 1 April, 2001
Today we started our first epic Australian road-trip. Our plan is to drive down to and around various parts of South Australia. Fellow Yanks here have said the big road trip has to be done at least once. Apparently that's all it takes to cure you from doing it again. Flights are cheap and fast, so why would anyone piss away all that time and discomfort driving across the Red Center?
Because you never know what you might be missing. Even in the middle of the outback. Or should I say especially in the middle of the outback.
Before heading out, we dropped Indy off with my wife's co-worker: fenced yard, little boy to play with, and cats to chase -- he should have a good time.
Our first layover was Coober Pedy. Like the last time I was down this way, the drive was long, straight, and uneventful. Even so, there's ways to make your own fun. We stopped at the Northern Territory / South Australia border for pictures (and to note that spray-painted graffiti seems to be a global problem). One of the road houses we stopped at for gas had a big beer can out front I had to have a picture of. Other than that, it was the scenic desert (much like southeast Colorado), road kill, and the occasional wedge-tail eagle making a meal of said road kill.
Driving into Coober Pedy is such an interesting experience. Hundreds and hundreds of mine shafts with the tailing mounds everywhere made for very bizarre scenery. Sort of an other-worldly, post-apocalyptic, land-of-the-giant-mole men feeling. No wonder so many sci-fi movies get filmed out here.
We checked into the Experience Motel once we got into town. The girl that checked us in had a tiny kitten in her lap that she had recently rescued from a junk pile. This in itself wasn't terribly interesting, but it was the stuff of legend to the girl. Front page news, people talking about it all over town for weeks... Oh, it'll happen. I grew up in small, rural towns. This kind of news is monumental.
The rest of the day was spent wandering around town. We browsed a few of the opal shops, but none of them were running tours of their mines since it was a slow day for tourists. Ah, well, maybe we can catch one on our way back. Once again, hunkered down outside one of the opal shops was that spaceship movie prop. After my previous trip, my wife and I figured out that it's from the movie "Pitch Black," which was filmed out here. I have to wonder what the story is behind it ending up in front of an opal shop in town.
For dinner, we crossed the street to the Pizza Bar. Talk about a slow day in town... we were the only two people there. I think we were the only ones that had been there all day. Again, the pizza was good, and the restaurant was a nice place: it reminded us of a 70s-era, pseudo-Italian restaurant. They even had a framed Ferrari poster on the wall (the kind you expect to see in a teenaged boy's bedroom).
Walking back to the motel, we just couldn't get over how desolate and dusty it was here; I can't imagine how bad it must get here in the summer. I don't suppose that's the height of tourist season.
That was it for the night. Relaxing and unwinding in our room was all there was left to do. Until my wife pulled back the blankets on the bed. It appeared that the motel staff considered washing the sheets between room occupants to be optional. I don't how many different kinds of hair and other funk was there, but it was nasty. I could be mistaken, but I doubt those sheets have ever been washed. And we're paying for the privilege to sleep on them. Lovely. I know water is scarce around here, but damn, shake the fucking sheets out once in a while.
On the bright side, who knows, maybe that was Mel Gibson's or Vin Diesel's hair we were sleeping on. Somehow I doubt it, besides, I don't like anyone enough to sleep on their body funk. Sleep came fully-clothed and on the outer-most blanket.
Because you never know what you might be missing. Even in the middle of the outback. Or should I say especially in the middle of the outback.
Before heading out, we dropped Indy off with my wife's co-worker: fenced yard, little boy to play with, and cats to chase -- he should have a good time.
Our first layover was Coober Pedy. Like the last time I was down this way, the drive was long, straight, and uneventful. Even so, there's ways to make your own fun. We stopped at the Northern Territory / South Australia border for pictures (and to note that spray-painted graffiti seems to be a global problem). One of the road houses we stopped at for gas had a big beer can out front I had to have a picture of. Other than that, it was the scenic desert (much like southeast Colorado), road kill, and the occasional wedge-tail eagle making a meal of said road kill.
Driving into Coober Pedy is such an interesting experience. Hundreds and hundreds of mine shafts with the tailing mounds everywhere made for very bizarre scenery. Sort of an other-worldly, post-apocalyptic, land-of-the-giant-mole men feeling. No wonder so many sci-fi movies get filmed out here.
We checked into the Experience Motel once we got into town. The girl that checked us in had a tiny kitten in her lap that she had recently rescued from a junk pile. This in itself wasn't terribly interesting, but it was the stuff of legend to the girl. Front page news, people talking about it all over town for weeks... Oh, it'll happen. I grew up in small, rural towns. This kind of news is monumental.
The rest of the day was spent wandering around town. We browsed a few of the opal shops, but none of them were running tours of their mines since it was a slow day for tourists. Ah, well, maybe we can catch one on our way back. Once again, hunkered down outside one of the opal shops was that spaceship movie prop. After my previous trip, my wife and I figured out that it's from the movie "Pitch Black," which was filmed out here. I have to wonder what the story is behind it ending up in front of an opal shop in town.
For dinner, we crossed the street to the Pizza Bar. Talk about a slow day in town... we were the only two people there. I think we were the only ones that had been there all day. Again, the pizza was good, and the restaurant was a nice place: it reminded us of a 70s-era, pseudo-Italian restaurant. They even had a framed Ferrari poster on the wall (the kind you expect to see in a teenaged boy's bedroom).
Walking back to the motel, we just couldn't get over how desolate and dusty it was here; I can't imagine how bad it must get here in the summer. I don't suppose that's the height of tourist season.
That was it for the night. Relaxing and unwinding in our room was all there was left to do. Until my wife pulled back the blankets on the bed. It appeared that the motel staff considered washing the sheets between room occupants to be optional. I don't how many different kinds of hair and other funk was there, but it was nasty. I could be mistaken, but I doubt those sheets have ever been washed. And we're paying for the privilege to sleep on them. Lovely. I know water is scarce around here, but damn, shake the fucking sheets out once in a while.
On the bright side, who knows, maybe that was Mel Gibson's or Vin Diesel's hair we were sleeping on. Somehow I doubt it, besides, I don't like anyone enough to sleep on their body funk. Sleep came fully-clothed and on the outer-most blanket.
nt sign
coober pedy main street
pitch black
underground house
motel room
