Foreign Property News | Posted by Zarni Kyaw
Back in 1915, a 14-year-old boy found a gemstone in the remote South Australian outback. From this discovery, Coober Pedy was born – a remote, fiercely hot place of a few thousand inhabitants today, sustained by its supply of opal and curious visitors. Here are a few of the things that make a visit to the town such a quirky experience.
Dig for opal/ Most of the world’s opal comes from this tiny outback town, but there are no big mining companies, because opal can’t be quantified through exploratory drilling – the only way to find it is to get digging. Budding miners simply turn up, obtain a land permit, peg a chunk of land and burrow.
Visitors who can’t afford to hire expensive tunnelling machinery can try their hand at noodling – the name given to the practice of digging through the piles of excavated earth which dot the landscape. Some still strike it lucky – one local told me how a neighbour had found a large chunk just hours after he started excavating his new dugout. “Before long, he’d excavated 22 rooms and found more than enough to cover the cost of his new home,” he said – but there are far fewer miners than there once were.
(An opal mine tunnel CREDIT: GETTY)
On a budget? Pitch a tent, underground/ Coober Pedy (meaning “white fella’s hole in the ground”) was named by indigenous Australians baffled by the early settlers’ preference for subterranean living – something avoided by the superstitious Aboriginal population but embraced by miners, who liked the cooler, sheltered conditions.
Serendipitously, many of the early settlers were former soldiers who’d recently returned from the trenches of World War One and were experts in the art of excavation.
Most residents still live underground. Some dugouts are huge – I was shown around the home of handyman Rod Wells, who has an indoor pool and an underground beauty parlour used by his beautician wife. There’s even an underground campsite (camp-underground.com.au; from AUS$16 per person), where visitors can turn up and pitch their tent in an abandoned mine.
Alternatively, there’s the Desert Cave Hotel (desertcave.com.au), where I stayed, which offers the darkest, quietest bedrooms I’ve ever known. High ceilings allay feelings of claustrophobia and the temperature hovers around 23C.
(It's cooler down there CREDIT: GETTY)/ (Sensible advice CREDIT: GETTY)
Follow the local Aussie rules football team on tour – a 560-mile round trip
The town’s team, the Coober Pedy Saints, take part in the Far North Football League. The only problem? Their closest rivals are all in Roxby Downs, 280 miles away. The side plays a dozen games each year, racking up a bill of around AUS$15,000 on transport.
(A row of televisions. We're not sure why. CREDIT: getty)
Play golf at night – in the dirt// There’s a golf course in Coober Pedy, but because it’s usually too hot to swing a club, most games are played at night with glow-in-the-dark balls. Signs warn players to keep off the grass, which isn’t hard, because there isn’t any. It’s also unique for another reason – it’s the only course where members have reciprocal rights with The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland.
(Do they still call them greens? CREDIT: GETTY)
Fly over the lowest point in Australia// This is an extreme part of the world and nearby Lake Eyre is no different. It is the lowest natural point in Australia, and visitors to Coober Pedy can sign up for a flight over it. On the very rare occasions it’s full, wildlife flocks to its edges, but most of the time it’s a giant white salt pan. It covers more than 3,500 square miles, and the highly reflective salt crystals transform the landscape into a startlingly bright, white desert which stretches as far as the eye can see.
It’s also significant for another reason, as the place where the British racing driver Donald Campbell set the world land speed record of 403.1 miles per hour in 1964.
(Arid landscapes near the town CREDIT: GETTY) (An underground church CREDIT: GETTY)
One tiny town, many nationalities// Coober Pedy’s population may be tiny – around 1,800 residents – but it’s surprisingly diverse with around 50 nationalities. The receptionist at my hotel was Sri Lankan, the waitress was Filipino and at the Greek-owned opal museum, women from Argentina and Ireland were on the tills. A British resident told me that an Inuit only recently left town.
Services for residents include a fire station, which is manned by volunteers, and a police station, staffed by 15 officers. There’s a tiny cell to accommodate criminals not quite worthy of a trip to the nearest prison, 650 kilometres away in Port Augusta.
(The town cemetery CREDIT: GETTY)
See the world’s longest fence// The 3,488-mile dingo fence can be found just outside of Coober Pedy. Built to protect sheep, it is the world’s longest continuous construction and stretches from Queensland’s east coast to the cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain.
The dingo problem costs the government millions of dollars every year. A Coober Pedy cattle hand told me that one year he returned to his cattle station for mustering season, only to discover that a section of the dingo fence which passed through his land had come down. In the space of a few months, dingoes had taken almost 1,000 sheep.
Ref: Welcome to Coober Pedy, the world's strangest town (telegraph)
