Travelling Walsh's: Time to go underground

As mentioned in yesterday's blog there was a slight change to camping under the stars. After putting up the tent, trying to drive pegs into compressed crushed rock and stop it dancing across the campground in the gusts of wind, we selected the best option was to move into an on-site cabin.

Katie went back to reception to check if a cabin was available and I waited with both hands holding on to the tent as it thrust around in the gusty winds.
After what felt like an eternity Katie called me on the mobile and gave the queue to pull it down as we had secured a cabin.

So while Katie was making the arrangements, I unmade the bed, deflated and rolled up the airbed and pulled down the tent. We then went over to the cabin and it was also better to be inside out of the bad weather than to end up with a damaged tent and not have anywhere to sleep later on in the tour. That evening the wind picked up and there was also some amount of rain. We did make the correct decision.

That evening I then asked how much was the cabin, Katie advised it was $200 but we were able to get credit for the site already booked. Apparently when Katie was performing the inquiries the lady said "I'm afraid we only have a deluxe cabin and it is expensive, its $200" and then Katie's face must have said more than words, as the lady continued and said empathetically "in this weather you don't really care how much it costs do you?"

That comment from the lady in reception basically summed it up. We had just driven 8 hours from Renmark, in a constant headwind and the site was worse than a desert, it had been converted to a gravel pit.

That night we had a good rest and woke up relieved and well rested.

Today the weather was much kinder and we went on a small tour of the BHP Olympic Dam Mine and a site where endangered species are protected on a 14square kilometer site.

Roxby Downs - Town Centre

This morning we headed off on an Olympic Dam Mine tour, one of the main reasons for taking this side trip off the Stuart Highway.

The tour was run by Arid Recovery a group that has created a fenced area free from introduced animals and are funded by the BHP mine and South Australian Government.

We were the youngest on the tour, we are well out of school holiday season at the moment, in fact, we can't see any children on tour.

The tour started in Roxby Downs information center and we saw a very interesting presentation on the discovery of the site, the creation of the town and how the town supports the mine and vice versa. The partnership appears to work really well. The local government of the area is run by administrators appointed by the state government, with polls or votes being conducted for key issues affecting the community. This reminded me of a similar process we learned the Swiss using, on a trip in 2016.

The tour had a ban on taking photos inside the mine site which makes it hard to recount so many of the details (should I be taking notes), but here are some of the key points we were able to recall this evening.

Olympic Dam Mine - From a distance

It is the largest underground mine in Australia, the third largest copper mine in the world, each shift can have up to 900 staff on site. Miners work seven days on then seven days off, with office staff working Monday to Friday. The mine extracts Uranium, Copper, Silver, and Gold. The Uranium is used overseas for power generation.

The next part of the tour was a very quick visit to see the work Arid Recovery is doing to help some endangered animals.