Coober Pedy

After hundreds of kilometres of flat, wind swept gibber plains with salt bush and very few trees, up pops Coober Pedy, a blip in the road. Pinky white, giant ant hills start showing up a few kilometres out, then you turn off the highway to a small dusty town of jumbled dwellings dug into the brown dirt hills. So much dirt and dust yet perfect kerbs along the main street.
This town has seen better days, quite a few places are shut down and boarded up. It also seems that once something is old and stops working it's just left to rot wherever it is. Why would you move it? Where would you move it?
Apparently, there had been some iron ore mining in the area, however, with the price so low at the moment all small scale operations have shut down.

We got a map and some advice from the information centre and did our own drive around tour. We went into an underground museum /hotel/opal shop and then headed to the public 'noodling' fields. Heaps of dirt and rock dug up by an excavator, just out of town for anyone to look for opals. There wasn't even any potch in the heaps, however, someone had dumped a ute full of rocks out of a tumbler in the car park and we found heaps of good pieces of opal. The kids sat there for a good hour, enjoying themselves and Lloyd enjoyed digging holes with a spade.
Later in the afternoon we visited the Catacomb church, dug in the shape of a cross in the side of a hill. The minister was very excited to see us and insisted on taking some interesting photos of us under the air shafts.
Last thing for the day we visited Faye's underground house. A home dug by 3 women in the 1970. Very 'old lady' and a little bit creepy. She even had an indoor pool. Worth a look for the freak factor.
Coober Pedy, a very special place.