Day 196- Marla to Lake Hart

Another massive day today, about 570km or something. HUGE! The road is as boring as bat$hit. Seriously. We thought the road from the QLD border to Tennant Creek was boring. We were wrong. That was a barrel of laughs compared to this. Miles and miles and miles and miles of nothing but red dirt and saltbush scrub.

So it was with a great deal of excitment that we greeted the big piles of coloured dirt outside of Coober Pedy from the opal mines. For 30 odd km out of town there are all these huge piles of dirt from all the holes they have dug looking for opals (and finding them from all reports! Lots of opal out there!).

We called in for lunch and to have a look around. WINDY! My gosh. The kids were a little freaked by it and Darcy kept whimpering and burying his head into me to avoid the dust that was whipping around in the air. I can't imagine living there. The sky was all grey and the sun obscured from the amount of dust in the air. There are even mines being dug right in the middle of town- this is the street just straight off the main road.
And imagine playing footy on this field-
Had a great lunch at an underground cafe and then had a look around the displays on the history of the town and how they mine the opal. Went to an underground church which was pretty cool (literally- it was heaps cooler in there than it was outside).
Then it was back in the truck to see how far we could push through. We were planning to just grab a camp by the side of the road and there were a few listed in the Camps4 that we were aiming for and as Jordy kept sleeping we kept driving. He had a massive sleep! YAY! And we ended up a good 100km past where we thought we'd get to.

We assumed Lake Hart was an actual lake and it looked quite nice from the lookout that was our stop for the night. Turns out it is a big salt pan. No water at all! Just shimmering white salt.