Coober Pedy: An Underground Town

On September 10, 2014 by Tim Newman

Coober Pedy is a small Australian mining town 846 Km north of Adelaide. The dusty, dry, scorching hot town is often referred to as the opal capital of the world; in all it has 70 opal fields to its name. In fact, the majority of the world’s opals still come from the roasting bowels of Coober Pedy.

The town’s population of 3,500 consists of 16% indigenous Australians and 60% Europeans from Southern and Eastern Europe who arrived after WWII. In all there are 45 nationalities represented.

The spaceship below was left behind by the producers of the film Pitch Black. It adds an extra facet of weird to the town. The moon-like area around the town has been used for a number of movies including Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and The Red Planet.

Coober Pedy has a network of “dugouts” carved into the hillsides where most of its residents live to escape the intense heat of the day. There’s pretty much no point being outside during the midday sun because you’d pretty much catch on fire immediately; in the summer it’s regularly 35+ degrees in the shade.

The cost of the dugouts is about the same as the cost of building a standard home but the dugouts remain a fairly constant temperature and don’t need costly air con running all the time, so they seem like the sensible option. You don’t get many views, but I guess there’s not that much to look at.

Here’s the local church: