The People All Live in a Hole in the Ground

The Aboriginal people in the area of Coober Pedy must have been totally and understandably perplexed as they watched the tiny opal mining town develop. We figure this is so because they named it the place where "crazy white men in holes" lived, or, in their language: Coober Pedy. As the opal miners that founded the town dug deep into the earth they noticed that the mines were significantly cooler than the parched desert above and they started living in the carved out tunnels. Soon they were made into homes, furnished and plumbed. It was not unusual, and apparently still isn't, to find tens of thousands of dollars worth of opals as you dig yourself a new room. Mining is now illegal within the town limits of Coober Pedy, but digging new rooms is not. In response to this but of leniency some people have thirty room houses underground. We heard a story of a bachelor in town who has ten rooms to himself.

We stayed in an underground motel/hostel, Radeka's Down Under, after taking a very pleasant Greyhound ride from Alice Springs. The dorm rooms where very cool, slightly damp and very very dark. Dawn looked much like midnight. The procession of Australian characters we've met across the Outback continued as soon as we stepped off the bus. An old prospector type with a massive bushy beard, cowboy hat and shorts that were a bit too short picked us up at the bus station, brought us to Radeka's and checked us in. He put us in a dorm room, one of ten or so such rooms, most of them completely empty, with two other people. We couldn't understand why we couldn't have the place to ourselves with fifty something empty beds elsewhere in the little catacomb of rooms, but I finally decided that he didn't want us to be lonely. So remote in the Outback is Coober Pedy that I think its citizens value company.

The Aborigines are weirded out by the underground houses. They think that under the earth is where the spirits dwell

In the morning we wandered the deserted streets while the sun baked the blacktop beneath us. We first climbed to the lookout point to take in the sprawling town. It is mostly made up of one story buildings and mounds of earth with ventilation shafts crowning them. Old mine equipment is scattered in backyards and abandoned on the sides of hills. Opals are sold everywhere. A drive in theater that stands empty for all but one night of the month creates one of the few big empty spaces of earth that haven't been dug up or bored into. An old sign that used to be posted at there reads: Please do not bring explosives into this Theater.

One interesting attraction was the "Old Timers Mine Museum", a labor of love for one family who fought to have the mine preserved so that tourists like us could see how a hand-dug mine used to look. The mine shafts are uneven and winding, the ceilings low. Dummys with fake beards and hard hats are propped up with shovels and picks, eyes vacantly yearning to be in a store window. Signs point to untapped seams of opal, still buried in the earth. Ten minutes after beginning to dig the souvenir shop, the owners found 50 thousand dollars worth of the precious stone. Apparently they've had multiple offers to buy the land, the mine is still rich, but they truly believe the museum must be preserved and the world is better for it. The mine is fun, wandering the low rough rock corridors and happening upon 'miners' is good, but the fascinating part is the family's underground home, furnished as it had been in the 60's.

The home reminded me of my grandparents house in LA, only in a mine. Vintage furniture and homey decorations made it look like it was still used. Each room was lovingly carved out of solid sandstone 12 feet below the earth. If they needed a new alcove or shelf, they just dug it out. The childrens bedroom was a bit eerie, the father had dug so far to make it that he broke into the mine itself. It reminded me of Tolkien's dwarves waking the Balrog in Moria, "They dug too deep..." and the kids got to sleep deep underground, next to the whispering darkness of the old mine.

The Aborigines are weirded out by the underground houses. They think that under the earth is where the spirits dwell.

We visited another underground house owned by a retired couple who moved to Coober Pedy a decade ago. They love the outback, and fell in love with the town's unusual charm. Mildly drawn to opals, they mostly seek out the stranger treasure of talking to the odd characters that make up the town's inhabitance. They are at risk of becoming a couple of characters themselves in fact, much as foreign objects like shells and wood are 'opalized' after millions of years in the rock. They actually live in the house that they open for tours daily, and are happy to show most every aspect of it, including the fine TV reception. They like to speak of the coolness, peace and quiet of living in a cave, much as we'd felt in our dorm room. Indeed as we left their home and I spotted a thermometer, 100` in the shade, I longed to go back inside.

The rest of the day was spent wandering the streets, exploring underground churches and bars, until we were too hot too continue. We retreated to the hostel and hid from the heat with snacks and a delicious cold beer. Having exhausted the other attractions in Coober Pedy, we went back down into our own cool, quiet cave and took a nap until it was time to head for the overnight bus to Adelaide .