Coober Pedy and the calamitous Mr Bump

After visiting Ayers Rock, we set off back on the main highway. It was hotter than we had ever experienced. We stopped at a roadhouse to check over Mr Bump and found that the radiator/engine coolant was leaking out of an old leaking pipe in the middle of the engine. This spelt trouble, as it would cost hundreds of dollars to get towed to the next town (200km away) and get it fixed. Luckily for us, a bloke driving a caravan came over to help and ended up spending 2hrs fixing the car up, with the aid of a bit of garden hose that we got off a man in the pub at the roadhouse. The bloke did it for free and didn't seem to mind keeping his wife and kids waiting until after dark.... amazing, he must have been our guardian angel or something!

Next day we headed tentatively on to Coober Pedy, a weird opal mining town in the driest, dustiest part of Oz. Most of the houses here are built underground, so naturally our backpacker's place had underground rooms that were amazingly cool. Visited an old timer's museum and saw that the old miners who worked here had a really harsh time. A very eccentric town: heaps of rubble, scrap metal, beat up old machinery and mine shafts all over the place - brilliant!

Before heading on, we'd got Mr Bump mended and we rather pleased with ourselves for making it so far. So, as fate would have it, only 20km out of Coober Pedy, we had a tyre blowout. A quick tyre change and another visit to a garage in Coober Pedy and we were back on the road again, but Mr Bump was quite out of sorts. We pushed on to Adelaide and made it before midnight, just in time for some free apple pie!