Life: Under Construction: Back from Camp

From Monday 7:30 am, The Journey to Roxby Downs, began.

I will break up this post into a day by day recount of what happened.

DAY 1

As I said before, on Monday 18th June, we departed school in a double decker bus!!!


Our awesome double decker bus

We then had a break at McDonalds where ppl got fries, ice-creams or just hung out for a break...

My first time at McDonalds in Australia...and I bought 3 soft serves for 30 cents which is just crazily cheap!

And I wont post any pictures because people wouldn't want their faces all over the net....

Anyways..... then we had a tour of the Arid Botanical Gardens at Port Augusta! I thought the entrance looked cool and everything was really red but a change from the city so for now I was enjoying the dark red colouring of sand..... (later my mind changes :P )

Forgot name of the tree....

Arid Recovery from path to food area

Metal Serpent

Anyways, we also had another break at Pimba (Spuds Roadhouse) and here a pic from there -

Our Journey is explained here actually....

We went from Adelaide to Pt Augusta to Pimba, and stayed at Glendambo overnight.

Then we drove to Cooper Pedy and explored stuff and stayed over there for Day 2

Day 3 we were at Andamooka and maybe a few other places on the way....we actually stayed in Woomera's ELDO hotel for Day 3 and 4...

Although on Day 4 we were at Roxby Downs for touring then had to go back to Woomera.

Then on Day 5 we were at Woomera again but then mainly in the bus all the way to Adelaide.

Day 2

We were at Coober Pedy today and saw The Old Timer's Mine, the Big Winch, stayed at Comfort Inn which was made underground with amazing walls and had Lunch at a cafe called John's Pizza Bar which happened to be run by an Ex - GIHS student!! Oh and we also did Noodling

So a lot happened, I bought 2 Postcards here for my sister and found some opals that probably don't cost anything but you could see the light! It was really exciting.

Pics -

The sign says "The Opal Factory"

Green Sign points to left saying "The Big Winch"

Look how blue the sky is!

Means of Transport at one stage

Old Timers Mine

Inside Old Timers Mine

Right next to the Old Timer's Mine, there was our hotel 'Comfort Inn' which had a cool and EPIC sign -

Mars is our Home :P :D

Day 3

We got a tour of Coober Pedy today morning, saw an underground church that is usually a tourist spot and saw the breakaways!
Apparently 70% of Coober Pedy is underground. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the houses had a staircase leading underground or something similar.

From high up

From below - look at the curves and ceiling/ground design

The breakaways -

In the distance

To the side

Then after the tour of Coober Pedy, we drove to Woomera to see the Rocket museum and played Ten Pin Bowling. It was my very first time bowling and I got 2 spares!!! I was surprised and it was good :D

The rocket museum was okay but I wasn't really too interested...

Door to Woomera Rocket Range Museum

It was very surprising to see that the Rocket museum, Bowling and even a cafeteria/diner was all located inside the same building along with tourist pamphlets and other things.

That was really just it for this day. After Bowling we went to ELDO hotel and had to write an essay in the evening which was on the topic of "Do the benefits of mining in South Australia outweigh the costs?"

Day 4

After breakfast, we went to Roxby Downs, saw a presentation about Olympic Dam in Roxby's only cinema hall and then got the chance to get a tour of Olympic Dam in our double decker bus.
Unfortunately, we were told that photos are not allowed....and although some pictures of some very horrible things could have been taken, my phone isnt very photo friendly anyway so it didn't matter much.

On the other hand, I did get these photos from a friends though-

Tanks for holding ores etc

Considerably very small machinery compared to others

Red hot metal stuff, there was even green of this for copper or something

When we drove through the gates, we saw MASSIVE buildings and terracotta coloured rusty steel structures, many were like GIGANTIC rainwater tanks that were 10 times larger, especially in width and obviously didnt contain water, but either uranium, gold, silver or copper.

Those are the 4 minerals Olympic Dam mines.

Another surprising thing to find was that there was tonnes of bright yellow sulphuric acid just lying therejust waiting for rain and high winds blowing it everywhere.
And guess what? During the tour, after going past that about 10 minutes later it started raining in Roxby Downs!
Seemed like carelessness to me.

No picture of that sorry.

A very big thing I noticed was that the place was MASSIVE i do not know how many square kilometers but it could be 100s and the place had eradicated trees, bushed and any sort of vegetation.
Instead there was polution, environmental loss and HUGE tanks and machinery just starting on finding ores.

On top of that, the Olympic Dam area is about to be expanded and made worse, more land cleared, more pollution and more damage to beloved earth that isn't so beloved anymore.

I think that 1 trillion dollars isn't worth damaging your home. It is just an act of selfishness.

After this, we had lunch at Andamooka and looked at their cottages and I bought another postcard.

Made entirely out of beer bottles

One of the cottages

Area outside the cottages

"Andamooka's town hall is the size of a shed" - Sam. S

The rain droplets can even be seen on the window of the bus as proof of it raining that day.

Later, we went back to Roxby Downs coz we had time on our hands and decided to hang around the shops and we even bought a pack of 8 ice-creams for like $5 from Wolworths and then found a bakery called Pie R squared!

AWESOME bakery

Ice-creams!! at Roxby in winter :D

Then our whole bus just hung outside the library...ironic because we are meant to be the nerdiest kids in the school.
Afterwards, we couldn't go to Arid Recovery Centre for muddy road as a reason and had to go to a Arid Recovery Lab instead which was boring and had bottled animals that looked sad and unpleasant to me.
Lastly, we had a picnic at a BBQ park in Woomera, and then got back to our Hotel to play UNO and have a great time :)

Park in daytime

It is called Breen Park - Animal Reserve

On the Friday, when we had a tour of Woomera, we saw the park in daylight and could actually see the name and everything, since it was really dark when we had the BBQ there.
I obviously being a vegetarian had brought my own food for the entire trip and here I heated my food in a container on the BBQ plates.....

Day 5

Today, we had a tour of Woomera like I mentioned, and here are some pictures from around the place -