Ochre painting

Dad and I have been crushing up rock to do paintings.

Coober Pedy - Opal mining

They mine for opal at Coober Pedy. Opals are a kind jewel that can come in lots of different colours. The name of the town comes from the Aboriginal words kupa piti that mean white man in a hole. There are piles of dirt everywhere where it was dug up to look for opals. The machine on the back of this truck is a blower, it's used to get the rubble out of the mine. They use all kinds of machines to help break up the hard rock and they use explosives too. We went into a mine at our campground.

Coober Pedy - they even go to church underground

This is St Peter and Paul's Catholic Church in Coober Pedy.

Coober Pedy

Coober Pedy is a hot dry place where a lot of the people live underground. This is where we camped. They even had a TV room underground in a room carved out of the rock.

Wilpena Pound

Wilpena Pound is a big circle of mountains, like a crater, in the Flinders Ranges. In the middle of the mountains it's flat and people used to farm there. They had to build ladders so their chooks could climb into the trees to be safe from wild animals at night. We went for a walk to a lookout but it was rainy so we couldn't see the tops of the mountains. There is an aboriginal legend that the mountains are the bodies of two snakes.

Pythons!

My favourite thing about Arkaroola was the pythons. There were two
carpet pythons in a big fish tank in the information centre. I visited
them three times. The last time we went they were all curled up together.

Bararranna Gorge

We did so well with the first walk that we did another one the next
day. Remember those flies? Here are some hitchhiking on Daddy's back and here's a big spider that catches them in its web.