Day 165 Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park

After a quiet night with lots of sleep Stuart was ready to go looking for opals. There is a "public noodling" area in Coober Pedy where everybody is allowed to look for opal pieces in the dust & dirt piles from opal mines. Stuart was very eager to find some opal pieces, so he was digging into it and collected over hours everything shiny he could find. Well, we had to tell Stuart, that everything he collected might be shiny in the sun, but no opals, so no rainbow-shiny opal pieces of the typical solid white Coober Pedy opals were discovered by Stuart.

In the afternoon we decided to head to the Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park for sunset. The drive into the park is through the desert, so for kilometres there is nothing to see except at one point the huge dog fence which goes through three states of Australia to keep dogs, dingos etc. out to protect wildlife and plants. Out of nowhere you can see then some green plants and even some wildflowers blossoming.

The Breakaways got their name, because the stones once broke away from the Ikara Flinders Range. On the drive through the Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park you see different rocks and rock formation with different colours and shapes. In combination with the setting sun Stuart thought this place was a very special place. We can only agree, the views were breathtaking...

On the drive back to Coober Pedy, we for the first time saw all the opal mining sites, easily spotted by the countless hills of mining dust. We had to stop Stuart from running on the hills looking for opals as these sights are owned by mining companies, so no public noodling allowed.