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All the excavated rock is heaped into piles that dot the nearby landscape

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the population of Coober Pedy is at around 3500 as of 2016

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Houses in Coober Pedy are in the ground, people live in man made caves. They are protected from the heat by sometime 30m of earth. Sometimes the insulation is so good the people need to put a heater on inside the house when it is 40 Degrees C outside.

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Unfortunately I lost my images for part of the trip. The section prior to Alice Springs was accidentally deleted so the pics of the underground room and the road train have been scanned from postcards.

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why live in such a hot and hostile place? Opals are the answer.

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Coober Pedy Opal Festival
The 30th Coober Pedy Opal Festival An Outback Festival like no other Friday 22nd June 2018 - Opening Night Fireworks Saturday 23rd - Street parade, Festival, Bushdance, Drive in, Golf Open Sunday 24th June - Speedway For more information please visit the Opal Festival website

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Coober Pedy Opal Festival The 30th Coober Pedy Opal Festival An Outback Festival like no other Friday 22nd June 2018 - Opening Night Fireworks Saturday 23rd - Street parade, Festival, Bushdance, Drive in, Golf Open Sunday 24th June - Speedway For more information please visit the Opal Festival website

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is very hot and dry

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Coober Pedy is a small Australian mining town 846 Km north of Adelaide. The dusty, dry, scorching hot town is often referred to as the opal capital of the world; in all it has 70 opal fields to its name. In fact, the majority of the world's opals still come from the roasting bowels of Coober Pedy.

The town's population of 3,500 consists of 16% indigenous Australians and 60% Europeans from Southern and Eastern Europe who arrived after WWII. In all there are 45 nationalities represented.

The spaceship below was left behind by the producers of the film Pitch Black. It adds an extra facet of weird to the town. The moon-like area around the town has been used for a number of movies including Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and The Red Planet.

Coober Pedy has a network of "dugouts" carved into the hillsides where most of its residents live to escape the intense heat of the day. There's pretty much no point being outside during the midday sun because you'd pretty much catch on fire immediately; in the summer it's regularly 35+ degrees in the shade.

The cost of the dugouts is about the same as the cost of building a standard home but the dugouts remain a fairly constant temperature and don't need costly air con running all the time, so they seem like the sensible option. You don't get many views, but I guess there's not that much to look at.

Here's the local church:

The name 'Coober Pedy' actually comes from the Aboriginal term kupa-piti which means "white man's hole".
MORE STRANGE PLACES TO VISIT: NITT WITT RIDGE - A POOR MAN'S CASTLE

More pics on the next page...

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Coober Pedy: An Underground Town * Lazer Horse

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Coober Pedy is a small Australian mining town 846 Km north of Adelaide. The dusty, dry, scorching hot town is often referred to as the opal capital of the world; in all it has 70 opal fields to its name. In fact, the majority of the world's opals still come from the roasting bowels of Coober Pedy.

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Is a desert community in south Australia that has dealt with the intense heat by living underground where it is cooler.