Boxing Day Blues

The relaxed atmosphere of the past six days quickly faded this morning amidst the hustle and bustle of packing our little home for the road once more.  We said our goodbyes to Ang and Rob, with hopes of meeting up again in a week for New Year celebration on the Eyre Peninsula.  Following big farewell hugs and high five all round, we went our separate ways.  Ang & Rob headed north to Kings Canyon while we turned south for Coober Pedy.

 

There was a cool change this morning, which made it great driving weather.  It was a long day in the car, made longer by the fact that we lost an hour with the time difference between the NT and SA.  Still, just love being back in day light saving time.

School work was completed quickly and effortlessly (yup, haven’t told them it’s school holidays) and we settled in to listen to Eldest - the second novel in the Christopher Paolini Inheritance series, and sequel to Eragon.  We stopped briefly at Ebeneezer Roadhouse for some Christmas leftovers for lunch, then later at Cadney Homestead where we paid $4 for an instant coffee Bruce had to make himself!  No driver reviver in the outback!!

The day passed quickly enough, and we enjoyed the cool change in temperature.  It was 7pm before Gary welcomed us back to the Op Shop & Clothes Barn campground at Coober Pedy.

The blower (above) is the most distinctive feature of the Coober Pedy landscape.  It is a giant vacuum cleaner that sucks dirt from up to 30 metres underground and dumps it on the surface.  There are between 60 and 130 blowers at any given time on the Coober Pedy opal fields.

Unfortunately, there was to be no noodling or underground exploration for us in Coober Pedy this time.  We simply needed somewhere to rest our heads before continuing our journey tomorrow.

We were surprised to see our new friend German (with a hard 'G') the German here and spent a short time catching up on events since we had parted ways.

With the Christmas decorations packed away and most of the Christmas food already eaten, Christmas already feels like a distant memory!  The boys, however, are getting good value out of their gifts.

The boys LOVE their new Christmas T-shirts.

Fletcher is pretty keen on his new jocks and socks too!

 

The kids, who had done amazingly well during such a long day in the car, expended some energy playing thong Frisbee until 9pm when the last light faded from the sky.