Coober Pedy

What a fascinating place this is!! When you drive in you see a dusty place with one disjointed street and you think it has nothing to offer. How wrong you are!!
Coober Pedy is one of the largest opal mining places in the world and many people come here to make their fortune. It has the special attraction of a totally different lifestyle. People who live here love it and many who come to “have a look” end up staying.
80% of the population live underground and there is an underground hotel, four underground churches,
an underground bookshop and many more. The beauty of living underground is that you can just dig out a few rooms and if you want to extend you just dig out another room. If you need a bookcase or a shelf you “dig it out”
The climate here is over 40 degrees in the summer and cold in the winter. If you live underground the constant temperature is between 22 to 25 degrees.
I visited the Desert Cave Hotel which is a luxury hotel built underground. There are tunnels of history and information about CP as well as a bar, restaurant etc.
There are lots of shops that sell opals which have all been mined and polished here.
The next day we drove around the town and visited the Serbian Church which was beautiful and Fay’s underground house. Fay arrived in the town when she was 29 for an outback experience and ended up staying, taking up a mining lease, establishing a café and digging out a two bedroom house by hand. She later extended this to three bedrooms and even had a swimming pool (the first one in Coober Pedy). The house is now open for viewing and is actually lived in at the moment. It is like a normal house with everything in it- even the TV works well. The underground houses have a calming feeling and you get no noise from your neighbours!!



The mining here is very interesting. You dig a shaft 20 to 30 feet deep and then tunnel out from there. They use explosives to blast some of the rock.
The excess rock is removed by a blower (which is like a huge vacuum cleaner) which sucks all the rubble and rocks out of the mine. Then you look for traces of opal in the exposed wall and follow this until you come to the main seam. You have to be very careful not to break the opal so you chip away underneath the seam with a pick (still today) until you can prise the opal out. Of course in the early days everything was done by hand- winching bucket loads of rubble up to the surface, tunnelling with picks – all extremely hard work. Because of all of the rubble that has to come out of the mines, the countryside around CP is like a moonscape with mullock heaps everywhere and we were surprised how extensive this was.

That afternoon I visited the Old Timer’s mine was the original mine started in 1915 all dug out by hand.
We had a demonstration of the equipment used in the mines now. We were showed how the blower works (which is set on the back of a truck) and we even fed a large piece of rock into the blower and it was sucked up immediately. We then saw how the tunnelling machine works. David explained how in the early days he had to winch all the rubble out with a drum and how you had to keep two hands on the winch while the flies and mosquitoes drove you mad. You partner was down below loading up the drum with the rubble.
After our demo you went on a self guided tour of the mine. Everyone had to wear hard hats so you didn’t bump your head as you went through the low tunnels.
As you went you saw dummies of the original miners doing the different jobs. There was also another underground house and the only underground Post office in the world. The whole mine was so well presented and so informative. Afterwards you could do some “noodling” – looking for opals in the rubble. I was hooked and stayed for ages to be rewarded with some interesting pieces albeit rather small.
After that a quick visit to Charlie the Chinaman from Hong Kong who had the weirdest front yard enticing you to take a photo. As soon as you stop, he comes rushing out and next moment you are in his house looking at his collection of opals. Sorry Charlie – no luck for you this time.

Then up to the lookout to get a view of the town. Not many houses to be seen but you see air pipes and TV aerials and protruding from the top of the hill and a door and windows on the side
.Last of all to the underground revival church and the underground Catholic Church – both very beautiful.
What an interesting day in a fascinating town.