Coober Pedy to Uluru

A short day of 7.5 hours of driving!

The opal mining town of Coober Pedy is a very dusty town of just over 1000, with about 60% men.

It is truly a desert town with warm days and cool nights. In the winter, the minimum hovers at 5C and max is just below 20. In the Summer, the heat is classed as 'stinking', in the 40Cs for months on end.

The miners realised that their mines were reliably cool, so as they dug out the opal, they set up complete underground homes.
We stayed in an underground cave hotel, which was rather surreal. You might think that the cave walls would be soundproofed but the opposite was true. We could hear every word of private conversations that we didn't need to hear.

We left by 7.55am, heading further north in high musical spirits towards Uluru.

When we finally arrived at Yulara, a resort town 30mins away from the rock, the busyness after the emptiness of the land for 100s of km was hard to bear.
We joined the land grab for enough space to erect our 2 tents in the seriously overbooked camp site.

After setting up camp and eating dinner, we went for a walk away from the 4x4 vehicles, the toilet queues, noise and dust - just imagine Delhi of an evening - and gazed on the stars in the darkness.
We had arrived with enough time to set camp in daylight, but not to check out Uluru at sunset - we needed to work that out from the 'old hands' who had been there for 2 nights already.

Extras:
Crossing the border from South Australia into the Northern Territory. Suddenly the number of flies vastly increased!
This sign was all over Coober Pedy warning us of the risks of walking backwards.