The underground homes in Coober Pedy make for consistent, tolerable temperatures when it’s obscenely hot outside in the South Australian outback. The opal miners who live in Coober Pedy live underground because it’s more pleasant.
The Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy
The walls of the room in the Desert Cave Hotel look like they’ve been splattered in blood. There are no windows to allow natural light in. Elsewhere, this would be grim. In the South Australian outback town of Coober Pedy, this is all perfectly normal.
The hotel room is underground, dug out into the side of a hill. The blood red streaks are part of the area’s striking natural sandstone.
The opal capital of the world
It’s not the red part of the sandstone that most people are interested in here, however. 90% of the world’s opal comes from in and around Coober Pedy.
And that’s what brings people to this inhospitable part of the South Australian desert. The first opal was found by a 14-year-old boy in 1915, and since then miners have flocked from all over the world.
This has led to an unexpectedly bizarrely cosmopolitan community in the middle of the South Australian outback. Around 45 nationalities are represented in and around Coober Pedy, bringing with them Chinese restaurants, Greek cafés and Italian clubs.
There’s also an underground Serbian orthodox church, which, as 80% of homes in the area are, is tunnelled out of the earth.
Movies filmed in Coober Pedy
To understand the subterranean mentality in Coober Pedy, you need to look at what’s above the ground. The landscape is staggeringly stark. The horizon is coated in a salmon pink dust, and rubble heaps from the opal mines are the major landmarks.
This is attractive to Hollywood movie maker wanting a post-apocalyptic hellhole or harsh alien planet. Mad Max 3 and Pitch Black are amongst the films shot in Coober Pedy. But it’s not an obviously enticing place to live.
Underground homes in the South Australian outback
Winter nights in Coober Pedy can be bitterly cold. But the days can be horrifically hot, with temperatures in the high forties Celsius. Throw in the dust, and it’s no surprise that of Coober Pedy’s 4,000 residents prefer to live in underground homes. Most have the mining equipment to dig such underground homes out, and the subterranean temperatures are a reliable 20 to 25 degrees Celsius.
Some of these underground homes can be visited, including Faye’s Historic Underground Home.
This outback abode is unexpectedly lavish. The upstairs section has an indoor swimming pool, while a chain of bedrooms slinks further underground and a (never-used) fireplace is fashioned out of semi-precious jasper stone.
Coober Pedy as part of a Stuart Highway road trip
It takes a special type of character to live in the desert furnace of Coober Pedy, but it’s arguably the highlight of the South Australian stretch of the Stuart Highway. Visitors can also go into mine, rummage in rubble heaps for opals and browse Aboriginal art galleries. To come to Australia just to visit Coober Pedy would be insane, but the town is a must-see if taking on the long desert drive from Adelaide to the Northern Territory.
More South Australia travel
Other South Australia travel articles on Planet Whitley include:
- In search of seafood on the Eyre Peninsula.
- Why I enjoyed the drive across the Nullarbor.
- Guide to Wilpena Pound for first time visitors.
- Swimming with sea lions in Baird Bay.
- Why you should book a Coorong kayaking cruise.
