Coober Pedy Travel Articles

When touring through South Australia we decided to spend a few nights in Coober Pedy and chose to stay at the BIG4 Stuart Range Outback Resort. Of course discounts apply for BIG4 members. This is a lovely looking park with great gardens, a nice reception area, onsite restaurant (Nostimo Pizzas), swimming pool and a wonderful enclosed camp kitchen. The reception area has a lovely opal shop, a range of souvenirs and Aboriginal art for sale - great selection.

There are numerous facilities provided at this lovely park:

• bus tours of Coober Pedy & the Breakaways
• new barbeques
• children’s playground
• TV Room  
• very clean amenities (coin operated showers due to water restrictions - 20c for 2 minutes) - disabled facilities - new laundry
• dump point
• bottle shop 
• range of apartments with the two bedroom superior sleeping up to 6 people
• un-powered caravan and camping sites around the perimeter (apparently the dirt is softer and allows pegs to be hammered into the ground)
• powered sites - mostly drive through

Our site was under a large shaded area covered by shade cloth that catered for about 10 caravans.  Each site is drive-through and you can face either way which is convenient with travelling in groups. These sites were large enough to leave the car hooked onto the caravan overnight enabling an early departure. 

We treated ourselves to a takeaway gourmet pizza from Nostimo (on the premises as mentioned above) which was absolutely lovely. The service was great and you can dine inside or outside sitting at the beautiful Bali-style shelters next to reception. All the sites are gravel but were quite flat and Stuart Range Outback Resort are trying to establish trees around the park for shade.  We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at this really friendly caravan park with great facilities.

NOTE: Coober Pedy is situated in a dry desert and water is a very precious and rare commodity. There is a water filling stations located within this caravan park which is coin operated and convenient. The other filling station is next to the Visitor Information Centre.

Oasis Tourist Park in Coober Pedy is a member of the Family Parks Group and located near the centre of town - about 250 metres from the shops and local attractions. One of the interesting things at this park is how they have created an indoor swimming pool and a recreation room. These have been built inside large water tanks and are very cool inside, offering protection from the sun.

Some features of the Oasis Tourist Park are:

• fully self-contained cabins - budget rooms
• ensuite powered sites - only tourist park in Coober Pedy with some Drive –Thru sites featuring water connection points
• un-powered caravan and camping sites
• on-site caravans
• under cover powered sites 
• camp kitchen
• barbeque area
• clean amenities - laundry - baby's bath
• dump point
• pets allowed (check with manager) 

The Oasis Tourist Park offers a “Tails & Tales” experience during the peak season with storytelling by local aborigines while you are served traditionally cooked Kangaroo Tails (Malu) around the campfire. We actually saw Kangaroo tails for sale in a freezer at a roadhouse near Uluru - have not tried one yet!

The staff at the Oasis Tourist Park were very friendly and helpful - happy for us to look around and take some photos.

NOTE: Coober Pedy is situated in a dry desert and water is a very precious and rare commodity. There is a water filling stations next to the Visitor Information Centre which costs 20 cents for approximately 30 litres. We made sure we were travelling with full water tanks in this part of outback Australia.