On Easter Saturday a
few people from my team at work were asked to help out at the Coober Pedy Opal
Festival. This event was partially
sponsored by OzMinerals, so 12 of us got on a mini bus and drove 2 hours from
site to Coober Pedy to represent the company.
Now for some fun
facts about the town! 80% of all opals
worldwide come from Coober Pedy, and I believe they're lighter in colour than
the other opals. Also, parts of the town
are built underground and many of the houses are built into the sides of
hills. Other than that, it is a very
rough and basic town in the middle of the desert.
Our day started with
a stop at the local pizza shop, which is exciting because that's the main
craving people get when they work on a mine site. While my pizza was cooking I ducked into the
underground opal shop/museum.
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| By "underground" they mean "in a hill." |
After lunch I also
quickly checked out one of the underground hotels, which seemed like a major
scam. Some of the rooms were actually
underground, but the rest of it just had fake rock walls.
To kick off the
festivities we watched the Easter/Opal Festival parade. It started with a guy running and carrying a
fist-sized opal that they had found in the past 12 months. This is an annual tradition. Next came a wide variety of floats, including
a mermaid/under the sea one and a tribute to Michael Jackson float.
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| Our crew was giving the kids on the floats OzMinerals balloons, which they seemed to enjoy. |
Many kids in the
parade were throwing chocolate eggs, so I got my Easter treats after all!
After the parade we
went to the OzMinerals Oval (yes, we sponsored that too) where the festivities
were taking place. Throughout the day we
helped with many of the competitions. My
favourite one of the day (that we didn't help with) was the kids boxcar
races. I cannot explain how cute they
all were, so here are some pictures.
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| The kid on the far right decorated his boxcar as a redback spider - legs and all! |
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| Why wasn't I this cute as a child?! I certainly don't think I ever had a matching hat with my mom. She's almost as cute as my sister, and that's saying a lot! |
Later we helped with
some regular races, a tug of war, a throwing contest, and the "sack of
opals" competitions. The group had
to hold the sack straight out in front of them for as long as possible. It was super fun to watch and cheer them on,
and it was much harder than you would expect.
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| The guy second from the left won. You should have seen their biceps trembling! |
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| I know it looks like we're playing soccer, but we're actually retrieving/marking distances as the competitors throw "sticks of dynamite" at us. I don't look nearly as silly as I usually do when I run! |
The final event of
the day was a hilarious obstacle course, and the winners were crowned Opal King
and Queen.
After a great day of "helping" a local community, we rode home exhausted from all of the
fun. Is there really any better way to
spend a day at work?
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