People of the older generation probably remember the Soviet film “Kin-Dza-Dza”. There was an episode where the main characters are brought to the city. But there is no city as such. There are only small pipes sticking out in the middle of the desert landscape. The people in this film (at least some of them) lived underground, and the pipes served for ventilation. Entire settlements lived literally in the ground, only occasionally emerging to the surface.
So the movie city has a very real prototype. This is the mining town of Coober Pedy, located roughly in the center of the state of South Australia. It lies on the Stuart mountain range, 300 kilometers from National Park Lake Air. The outskirts of the city are a deserted and deserted landscape. Hundreds of kilometers around are sparsely populated areas. To Adelaide (most big city state and the fifth largest in Australia) you need to get 850 kilometers south along the Stuart Highway.
Coober Pedy on the map
- Geographic coordinates -29.010474, 134.757343
- Distance from the capital of Australia Canberra is about 1550 km
- Distance to the nearest airport Ceduna is approximately 360 km
All distances are shown “as the crow flies”
And people there really live underground, in specially dug apartments. The decision to live under a layer of earth was dictated by the locals natural conditions. During the day, the air warms up to 40 o C, and by night the temperature can drop to 7 o C. Sudden temperature changes make life on the surface not entirely comfortable. And periodic sandstorms further aggravate the situation.
Here we could not help but deviate from the topic. It seemed to us that these “terribly harsh”, downright unbearable conditions were not so terrible. Read about the Pole of Cold in Russian Oymyakon. The conditions there are really unrealistically difficult. There, even car tires can crumble like chocolate, and temperatures of minus 40-50 are quite common.
What basically forced people to go underground in Coober Pedy? After all, Australia is a wonderful continent; there are many places much more suitable for life. Take Hyams Beach, a beach with perfectly white sand. Scramble in the sand and look at the ocean. Or Fraser Island, where sand has been fighting with the rainforest for hundreds of years. But no, people are drawn to the desert, and even underground. The answer is actually simple. There are huge reserves of the precious mineral here. Opal is why people still live here. It has been mined here since 1915.
This is what opal looks like In general, simple opal was first found in these places back in 1849 at the height of the gold rush. Full-scale mining began in 1915, when noble opal was discovered here. According to scientists, approximately 30% of all world reserves of this valuable mineral are located here. That's why Coober Pedy is also called the Opal Capital of the World. Opal is widely used in jewelry.
The miners adapted to living in dugouts. It turned out that the temperature there was almost always about 22°C. Miners often went to work directly from home; for this, tunnels were dug directly into the mine. The workers dug entire houses underground, and lived well in them. In addition to housing, there is a bar, a museum, churches, an art gallery and even a hotel for tourists who want to experience what it is like to live underground.
The development of equipment and technology has allowed more than half of the inhabitants to move to the surface, but there are citizens who still live underground. And they live very well. Their house has everything they need for a comfortable stay - a kitchen, living room, bedrooms and even bathrooms. Naturally there is electricity, running water and sewerage. They call these apartments “Dugout” and come in two versions. Natural and modern. In the first option, the walls of the house are only strengthened with special impregnations or an emulsion of ordinary PVA glue. This prevents them from falling off and eliminates dust. In addition, this design creates the illusion of primitiveness. You can take pigments and place mammoths, or in our case kungurus, on the walls. Modern design involves creating familiar rooms, but only underground. In this case, the floor, walls and ceiling are leveled, plastered and poured. The result is a completely modern home. Its underground character is revealed only by the absence of windows. In the beginning, according to tradition, two windows were made near the front door, but then the temperature balance in the room was disrupted. However, now this problem can be solved by installing an air conditioner. Everything else is the same as in any modern house. Sometimes both styles are combined and you can go from a trendy and modern living room to a primitive bedroom.
- translated from the language of the local tribe, Coober Pedy means “white man’s hole” or “underground white man”
- extraterrestrial desert landscapes have become natural settings for some famous films. In particular, scenes from the blockbusters “Mad Max.” Under the Dome of Thunder" and "The Black Hole" were filmed here. There’s even an entire starship from the movie “The Black Hole” preserved nearby.
- The city hosts a number of festivals: Coober Pedy Races, Queen of the Desert and the Opal Festival. And all the residents gather annually to celebrate the end of summer with noisy celebrations.
- according to 2011 data, just under 1,700 people lived in the town
- In 1956, the largest opal was found in the Coober Pedy area. Its dimensions are 28 x 12 x 11.5 cm. Weight is 17,000 carats or 3.45 kilograms. The find was valued at 2.5 million Australian dollars. This nugget was named Olympic Australian Opal (originally The Olympic Australis Opal) in honor of the then Olympic Games in Melbourne
- there is an underground cemetery in the city
- There is no water at all in Coober Pedy. Many times people tried to drill wells, but they never managed to get to the water. The region cannot boast of heavy rainfall - usually no more than 150 mm falls per year. Water comes through a 24 km long pipeline from a small settlement nearby (this settlement could not be found on the map, if you have information about this, please let us know)
Coober Pedy photo
In one of the driest corners of Australia, where instead of rain there are sandstorms and there is no water even underground, the Australians have built an underground city with all the attributes of public life.
The town of Coober Pedy is located in the state of South Australia on the eastern border of the Great Victoria Desert. It got its name from the Aborigines, who called the settlement of new Australians in their ancestral lands “the white man’s hole.” And the city itself arose as a miners' village. In 1915, noble opal was discovered in the Stuart Range, and it subsequently turned out that there were layers of precious stone here, amounting to 30% of the world's reserves.
From the heat to the ground
Coober Pedy's climate is very harsh. The sweltering heat during the day gives way to a sharp drop in temperature at night. The temperature difference reaches 20 degrees. On the surface of a person there are clouds of flies. In addition, sandstorms often occur. To escape the heat and the pervasive sand, the first settlers of the mining village began to build their homes in the exhausted mines. The peculiarities of the development of the opal deposit required the construction of shallow horizontal mines in the form of tunnels with branches. Miners and their families began to settle in such sleeves.
Real apartments with several rooms were equipped underground. To keep things cool, they usually cut one or two windows near the front door, so the air temperature was naturally maintained around 22-24 degrees.
Churches, shops, workshops, and a cemetery were built underground.
Nowadays, the few residents of the city live in both underground and above-ground dwellings, with air conditioning installed to create a comfortable atmosphere. The dug houses are fully equipped with modern means of comfort - sewerage, electricity, running water. There is even a choice in the decoration of the premises - natural, when the walls of the rooms cut into the stone are simply coated with a special composition for cleanliness, and modern - the stone walls are sheathed with plasterboard, and such a house is indistinguishable from other houses in Australia.
The main treasure
As already mentioned, the city arose from an opal deposit. There is a museum, shops, hotels, and a small local airport. Feature films are often shot in the fantastic surrounding landscapes. In the city and surrounding areas, the preserved remains of decorations, various mechanisms and aircraft remind of this.
But the main treasure in these desert lands is water. The nearest artesian well was dug 25 km from Coober Pedy. No matter how close we looked, there was no water. In former times, water was delivered here by pack caravans and it was worth its weight in gold. Modern city residents receive water from a piped water supply system, but its price is much higher than in other regions of the country.
- Iron trees grow in the city - artistic decoration with familiar forms
- The most common form of vegetation is cacti.
- Dug underground houses are called Dugout
- Churches are open for free visits, the main thing is not to forget to turn off the lights when leaving, as the signs at the entrance ask you to do.
- The city's small population consists of 45 nationalities
- Blower - a vacuum cleaner machine for sucking rock from a mine to the surface
How to get there
Coober Pedy is located next to the Stuart Highway, between Adelaide and Alice Springs. The nearest city, Port Augusta, is 500 kilometers away.
Coober Pedy is a convenient place to visit on an excursion on the way to the Red Center from Adelaide. If you wish, you can stay overnight in the underground city at a local underground hotel. If you are traveling around Australia, you will certainly use the Stuart Highway, which crosses the mainland from south to north, passing through the states of South Australia and the Northern Territory; it is simply impossible to drive past Coober Pedy.
We invite you to look underground and visit the extraordinary underground city of Coober Pedy, where about 2 thousand people currently live.
At first, when you find yourself on these sun-baked red plains of Australia and see an absolutely “clean” landscape that is not particularly rich in buildings, it seems that the place is completely lifeless. But in fact, here is a stunning, mysterious town called Coober Pedy.
And what makes it special is the fact that this city is located underground.
There are no trees here, and the sun bakes with merciless force, but underground there are many kilometers of tunnels and rooms furnished as in ordinary residential buildings.
However, there is also accommodation for tourists who come here. From this corridor the doors lead directly to the guest rooms.
The locals settled here quite comfortably. Some houses are only half underground, which only adds to their uniqueness. It is worth noting that in terms of comfort they are in no way inferior to ordinary modern houses.
The history of the original city began in 1915, when a father and son ended up here while traveling in search of gold.
They didn’t find gold here, but they did find beautiful opals, which quickly gained no less popularity.
The miners who came here could not withstand the high temperatures of the local climate and therefore built their houses not above the ground, but right between the mines.
They began to dig long tunnels, so over time about 1,500 dugout houses appeared in Coober Pedy.
In the modern world, Coober Pedy has long become the main supplier of opals. However, people come here no longer to look at precious stones, but to see the strange dugouts, the homes of the people living here.
The city's name means "white man's hole", an expression that appeared here in the 1920s.
Besides the mines, hotels and houses, there is also a beautiful church underground in Coober Pedy.
And also an underground bookstore.
And an underground jewelry store offering charming opal mined in the mines nearby.
Of course, you should also visit the underground bar for a drink with friends.
And then go upstairs and play golf on a platform specially equipped for this.
Finally I got to the photos of the city of Coober Pedy. We passed it earlier when we were still traveling around the state of South Australia.
To virtually walk around the city, click on the green “View Larger Map” in the lower left corner. When the map opens, drag the little yellow man onto the city streets.
This amazing city. We have very pleasant memories of him.
Coober Pedy is called the "opal capital of the world" and is an Aboriginal word for "white man in the hole."
Up to 90% of the world's precious opal production comes from Australia, and about three-quarters of this comes from the state of South Australia.
At first glance, Coober Pedy is not much different from other mining towns. Dirt roads cross the entire territory and waste rock dumps are visible. But there are no towers or lifts over the mines and there are no buildings.
Strange round mounds with a hole in the middle give the impression of a volcanic area dotted with small ash cones.
Each of these small hills is connected by a shaft to an entire underground world.
The soft, sandstone rocks of the desert are not at all difficult to dig with a pick and shovel, although explosives are also used. Most opals are found at depths of up to 24 m, but many workings are much shallower. Each miner is allocated a small area in which he works. The technique is mostly traditional. A prospector digs up his plot of land, hoping to find a large vein that will bring him a fortune.
In addition to this beautiful mineral, the houses of local residents, dugouts - underground dwellings in which natural temperature control is carried out - are also very popular.
Even the first prospectors realized that they could settle relatively comfortably underground, in dwellings that cost almost nothing. As for their successors, their families live in modern underground comfort. Many of their houses are very large and simply luxurious, and some even have underground swimming pools.
These areas are for underground dwellings. Such areas are located on the outskirts of the city. You can buy and dig your own house or motel. During the season, all motels and hotels here are occupied. As everywhere else, you need to book a room in advance.
It should be noted that there is absolutely no water in Coober Pedy - no matter how much they drilled, they have not yet reached the water. When you consider that this is one of the rainiest regions of Australia, it becomes clear that water was initially very expensive because it was transported many kilometers by pack animals, mainly camels. Currently, there is running water, but water is still relatively expensive ($5 per 1000 liters).
Coober Pedy is one of the hottest places on the planet. And in the underground house the temperature all year round stays at 22-26 degrees. We were invited to visit one of these houses. 60% of the city's population live underground.
The owner of the house is named George Russell. He is the owner of Oasis Tourist Park
A good person, very sociable. Gave him a decent discount when we stayed at his motel the first night.
The next morning, George showed his house.
This is the living room.
Indeed, a very pleasant coolness after the scorching sun.
This is a guest house. On the right along the stairs, there is a kitchen and 2 rooms of the owner of the house.
To the left of the stairs are 3 guest bedrooms, a toilet and a bathroom.
All underground rooms are spacious, with high ceilings and well ventilated.
Very cozy and comfortable.
I wanted to have a house like this here. Sometimes we come to live in absolute silence, without radio and electromagnetic waves that surround us everywhere.
The town has not only underground houses, but also numerous underground hotels, restaurants, shops and even churches.
In 1988, the world's first underground hotel was inaugurated. This hotel has become so popular that many local residents began to open large and small motels throughout the city, as well as guest houses with 3 and 4 bedrooms.
One of the first underground motels that we saw was “Radeka down under motel”, it is located on the main street of the city.
This is a mid-range motel.
It’s 11 am, and it’s already +36.
We were greeted by the owner of the Martin Motel.
A very colorful guy.
There are rooms that are located in the rock, and rooms that are 6.5 meters underground.
We chose a room, of course, underground. It's much more interesting to sleep there.
It was an active opal mine until the 1960s.
And in the mid-80s, the mine was transformed into an underground complex - a motel.
The cost of living in a motel starts from $32.
This is our number. We rented it for $70 (they gave us a $10 discount).
Everything is very simple. Everything you need is here. The very fact that you sleep underground already sounds unusual. And most importantly, it’s cooler here than at the top. And this was one of the reasons why we went underground.
Overall, I slept well in this room. The only inconvenience is strong audibility. You can hear all the neighbors. Therefore, those with nerves of iron and good sleep should settle here. Gabriel, for example, slept well. And I listened half the night to my neighbor’s snoring and the crying of a small child. So, if anyone needs to sleep, live up in the rock.
These rooms are mainly used by students who do not have money for a room, or lonely tired travelers who quickly fall asleep and hear nothing.
And you can move into this room with a large group and remember the pioneer camp. It would be fun. 
To be continued…
To view photos in large size, click on them 1-2 times.
Coober Pedy – small town underground in Australia, which is located in the central region of the country. It received the title of the opal capital of the world thanks to the huge deposits of these minerals, which shine in rainbow colors. There are approximately 30% of all opal deposits on the planet. No place on Earth can compare with it in this indicator.
This mining town is also known for its unusual underground houses. It is believed that its name has something to do with them. It comes from the language of the indigenous people of the country. The combination “kupa-piti” is translated as “white man’s hole.”
More than 1,600 people live in the underground “holes” of the town of Coober Pedy, dug at a depth of an average of 4-5 meters. The main business of local residents is the extraction of precious opals.
The city is located in the Great Victoria Desert, in the south of the country. This is one of the driest and most sparsely populated areas of the continent. With the advent of the twentieth century, precious opals began to be actively mined there. Since this place was always hot, dry, and sand storms periodically raged, the miners, along with their relatives, began to move into houses carved out of the mountains. Many of them had a direct passage into the mine. The conditions in these “apartments” were quite comfortable, no worse than in traditional dwellings. At any time of the year, the temperature in them did not rise above 22-24°C. There were the same rooms we were used to. The only thing missing was windows, since due to the extremely high summer temperatures, a maximum of two windows could be made.
If you build a home in a town with the largest deposit of precious opals, you can get rich, because approximately 96% of these stones are mined here. Some time ago, they were drilling for a hotel in Coober Pedy and found specimens worth approximately $360,000.
A valuable deposit was unexpectedly discovered a hundred years ago, in 1915, when they were searching for water sources in the area. The very next year, prospectors began to flock there. It is estimated that approximately 60% of Coober Pedy's population was from European countries. They moved there when World War II ended to work in the mines. Thus the city became the largest producer of high-quality opals in the world and still remains.
The distinctive properties of noble opals include rainbow tints. This is explained by the diffraction of light on its spatial lattice. The high cost of a stone is determined not by its size, but by how unique this play of color is. The value of opal depends on the number of rays.
The Aborigines have a legend that in very ancient times, spirits took the colors of the rainbow from the rainbow and hid it in opals. The second legend says that the Creator descended to earth and rainbow stones appeared in the places where his foot stepped.
Nowadays, stone mining is carried out only by private entrepreneurs, but this activity still brings the country about 30 million dollars a year.
Previously, opals were mined by hand, using shovels and picks. The rock was removed in buckets, and along the discovered precious vein it was necessary to crawl on one’s bellies.
The majority of mines are located at shallow depths. Their main passages were made using special drilling machines that cut tunnels about two meters high. Branches extend from the tunnels. These devices consisted of an engine and gearbox from a small truck. After this, they began to use a machine called “blower”. A high-power compressor was built into it, which sucks in the rock through a pipe placed in the depths. If you turn it off, the barrel opens. This is how a new small hill, or waste heap, appears. At the entrance to the opal capital, you can see a large sign depicting this car.
In the 80s, they decided to build an underground hotel in the city. Since then, there has been an influx of tourists every year. Here you can even go into two underground churches (one of which is Orthodox!).
Among the most visited attractions in the capital of opals is the house of the recently dead person, who was nicknamed Crocodile Harry. He gained popularity due to his countless love affairs and eccentric lifestyle.
Coober Pedy is considered the driest place in Australia. Only 175 millimeters of precipitation falls there per year. This is more than three times less than in European countries. It almost never rains there, which means Coober Pedy is not rich in vegetation. There are no big trees or beautiful flowers. You can find only a few shrubs and plants that retain moisture in their tissues (for example, cacti).
However, such conditions do not prevent local residents from finding entertainment in nature. They love to play golf, but can only do it at night when the heat subsides. For this purpose, there are specially equipped fields with movable grass and spherical lanterns that allow you to see in the dark.
In the city you can go to underground shops, souvenir shops, museums, bars, a jeweler's workshop, and also see cemeteries.
Coober Pedy has a desert climate. Summer time lasts from December to February, and average temperature reaches 30-40°C. With the onset of night it drops sharply (to 20°C). It is very difficult to get used to such changes. Sometimes sand storms rage here. To escape the heat, local residents dig underground apartments for themselves. Many descendants of the first miners decorate the interior of their homes in the “a la naturel” style, which involves covering the walls with a solution of PVA glue. This way you can eliminate dust and, moreover, preserve the natural color and texture of the stone. In these unusual apartments, the toilet and kitchen area are located right at the entrance, because in Coober Pedy there is no sewage system underground. All other rooms are usually dug deeper. Columns are built to support ceilings in large rooms. Their diameter can reach one meter.
Lovers of modern interiors apply plaster to walls and ceilings. Thanks to this design solution, the underground “apartment” looks just like an ordinary one. Residents of the city also prefer to install such a luxury item as an underground swimming pool - a real salvation for those who live in one of the hottest regions of the planet.
The capital of opals has become one of the main points of most routes around Australia for tourists. Of particular interest to visitors is that Coober Pedy itself and its surroundings are considered very photogenic, which is why filmmakers often come here. For example, in 2006, the Australian film Opal Dream was filmed there. In addition, it became the setting for the film “The Black Hole”, and scenes of the movie “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” were filmed in underground houses.
On the edge of the town is the largest cattle farm on the planet, as well as the famous “Dingo Fence”, stretching for 8,500 kilometers.
Each mound that is visible on the surface is connected to the underground using a shaft. This is the only way to survive in such an unfavorable climate.
Currently, over 45 nationalities can be found among the residents of Coober Pedy, most which are the Greeks. Drinking water comes through an artesian well, which was drilled 25 kilometers from the city.
The opal capital of the world does not have a common power grid. Diesel generators are used to produce electricity, and the premises are heated using solar water heating panels.
From a bird's eye view, this unusual underground city in Australia may surprise you not with the buildings familiar to our eyes, but with rock dumps dotted with thousands of holes dug in the red desert. This is an incredible sight that makes you feel like you are on another planet.
