Coober Pedy
An Opal Mining Town In The South Australian Desert Where Most Homes, Churches And Hotels Are Dug Underground To Escape Summer Heat That Regularly Passes 45 Degrees Celsius, Still Producing Most Of The World'S Opal · Coober Pedy, South Australia
Coober Pedy sits on the Stuart Highway in the far north of South Australia, around 850 kilometres and roughly eight hours by road from Adelaide through empty desert country. Opal was found here in 1915, and the heat that followed - summer days routinely above 40 degrees and sometimes past 45 - pushed miners underground, first into abandoned mine shafts and then into purpose-dug homes called dugouts, carved into the sandstone hills ringing the town. More than half of Coober Pedy's roughly 1,500 to 2,000 residents still live below ground, alongside several underground churches, a bookshop and an underground hotel, all holding a steady, cave-like temperature with no air conditioning needed. The town still produces most of the opal mined anywhere on earth, and miners from dozens of countries gave the place an unlikely international mix for somewhere this remote. Above ground it looks spare and functional - corrugated iron, mullock heaps, utes outside the pub - and that plainness, alongside an alien landscape used in more than one film, is most of what makes the long drive worth it.
An opal mining town in the far north of South Australia, on the Stuart Highway about eight hours from Adelaide, Coober Pedy, South Australia, Australia
Coober Pedy itself never closes, but almost every attraction keeps its own set hours. The main underground mine museums and tours - Old Timers Mine, Tom's Working Opal Mine, the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum - run tours through the day, roughly nine to five, with the last tour starting mid-afternoon. The underground Catacomb Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church of St Elijah are usually open to visitors during the day but close for services and some weekday afternoons, so a planned visit can find the door shut without warning. The Big Winch lookout and the Breakaways Conservation Park have no gate and no fixed hours, though the unsealed Breakaways loop road is best driven in daylight. Fuel, food and the bottle shop keep ordinary daytime hours and most close by early evening outside the Easter opal festival weekend.