a warrior's pilgrimage --still haven't found...--


My bus arrived in Coober Pedy at 6:30 in the morning. I walked down the main street, hoping to find a sign pointing me to the Breakaways. I had no luck, so I tried to circle around and get back into town. The road I was on dead-ended in the Aboriginal community, so I cut through the homes and hiked up a hill, trying to assess my location. The center of town seemed still quite a walk away. I climbed over a fence, and as the sun began to rise, I could begin to the see hints of the rusty landscape below me: hills, mines and the rocky gibber plain as far as the eye could see. As I descended from the hills, the sun brought life to the desert. Before I knew it, a legion of flies surrounded me, like vultures, buzzing around my head. They tried to get into my ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and there were dozens of them sitting on my back. I tried drinking out of my water bottle without letting any flies into my mouth. I tied my long-sleeved shirt around my head, but it didn’t help, and soon I was helplessly swinging it around me by the sleeves, trying to get a moment’s peace, as I stumbled through what I suspected was private mining property. I finally made it to the highway that led into Coober Pedy. I walked downtown to the tourist information center, and from there, decided to stay at an underground hostel that also offered a tour.

Once on the tour, we drove up to the scenic point of the Breakaways, a panoramic view of the wasteland, and of a variety of multi-colored mounds beneath. The scenic point was used 3 times in the film, representing 3 different locations. We drove down a path into the valley, where we passed the large mound that represented Bartertown, and the white and yellow rock structures that were used for the location of Max’s send-off into the sand dunes. We drove out further, across the Moon Plain. On the way back to Coober Pedy, we stopped at Crocodile Harry’s underground home. The inside was filled with sculptures of naked women, bras and the names of the many women who had signed the walls. We went around to the cavernous half of the house, where there was a tunnel in the ceiling leading up to the trunk of a car. I ran up to the top of the house and took a picture of the car that was used as the tunnel’s entrance, and ran back down in time to catch the tour bus.

The next morning, disappointed that I hadn’t found any leftovers from the movie anywhere in town, I decided to go on another walkabout. I walked back to where I had gotten lost the previous day, and all around the outskirts of town. I walked by many homes, restlessly looking for anything that resembled a Mad Max vehicle. I came to a junk pile at the top of a hill, and carefully inspected cars and debris. The closest thing I found was the remains of an old dune buggy. After coming back into town for lunch, I decided I had nothing better to do than to walk the 7 km’s to Crocodile Harry’s, so I could take more pictures. I passed a junkyard on the way, and the owner let me take a quick look before he closed for the day, but I found nothing. When I got to the dugout, I attempted to get some answers from Harry. He told me that he had had Tina Turner’s bra hanging on his wall, but it was stolen just a few weeks ago. I returned to Coober Pedy, and prepared for my departure. I wandered the wastelands alone, searching for some remnant, some relic of a time when the machines ruled the highways, but I found nothing. Nothing more than empty mines, red dust clouds, and an endless source of flies.

The actual entrance to Jedediah Jr.'s shaft	Looking up the trunk through Jedediah's Jr.'s shaft
	Dune buggy remains