Coober Pedy...is this for real?

It's flat out here...real flat, until these:

 ...then we knew that we were close to Coober Pedy. See that green stuff - that is not meant to be there, but it has been raining so, so much that things have been growing here!  (and roads are being shut)

We didn't get to go to the Breakaways (they were that-a-away) due to that wet stuff lieing on the ground.  "Road Closed"

 When the rain stops, the sun comes out, even if it is at the end of a day of driving through howling winds and rain

Now, Coober Pedy, for some reason is built underground (2/3 houses apparently) due to the HEAT!!!  We were freezing.  It was 15 degrees when we got there.  Polar fleeces and thermals on.  We camped at the Oasis caravan park (they had made the effort to drill into the rock and plant some trees, so we were lucky to have some trees there.  Coober Pedy, we found, was a town stuck in time.  The signs were from the 60's and 70's, the buildings were probably the same.  Derelict cars and machinery all over the place, wind howling through with no trees to break it.  Art made out of rubbish.  Locals were great characters lost in time and place.  Came for a week and stayed for fourty years.  Waiting for that big moment.  A sense of lawlessness. Two nights was certainly enough for us to wait for the William Creek road to dry out, see the sights, and eat the most delightful pizza at John's pizza shop (great food here! Who would have thought?!).

Up at the "Small Winch" where a man from Hong Kong makes art, digs for opals and drags tourists into his house, turns the lights on to look at jewellery, then realises that they are not buying, and turns them off, and shoos the tourists out again.

Chimney stacks in the mounds, a good sign that there is a house underneath

 Great old cars

 Carpark to the "Big Winch"...had a ghost town feel to it

Yep

Rusty old machinery, still being used...

When you can't grow trees, build one

 The blower (all around the place here) a NZ invention.  "Quite ineffective because it has to suck and blow" David, Old Timers Museum

fence lines

After a bit of noodling (a great word for looking for opals in the scrap heaps) a bit of looking at the old mining equipment

 or reading mags

People's backyards

street sign

 street scape

 signs, signs, signs....

outta here....roads open, back onto the dirt