Try living underground for a few days!

steve_irwin · Joined: 23 Feb 2005 Posts: 30

In the Australian state/province of South Australia (SA) lies a town known as "Coober Pedy", a town known for its opal mining operations. In the aborigine language (Australia's native people), it translates to "white man's hole in the ground" (fitting name!).

Cooba Pedy is basically a hole - or many holes, as it seems - located in the desert outback. Nearly half the town's population live underground for periods of months, most of them being miners and their families.

Its one of those towns which really brings out the Wild West "frontier spirit", although somewhat tamed by recent tourism. You can tour the underground mining shafts, visit the local opal museums, buy a few opals, and even spend a few nights in the famous underground hotels.

If you're adventurous, you can even try digging for opals! There are special opal fields that are supervised and maintained, and for a small fee you can try your luck.

cocodrilo · Joined: 12 Apr 2004 Posts: 494 Location: Western Japan

This is a coincidence, because I just saw a documentary on this. In it, it showed the residences of some of the miners(anyone can lease land on which to mine, at dirt cheap prices) and the reason they are lving underground is that the average temperature over there is like 41 degrees(what's that in Fahrenheit, like 95?)! Turns out it is not easy to mine opals, and it is a matter of pure luck whether you run into an opal "vein" or not.

on_way_to_fame · Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Posts: 15

this is something really exciting..never heard of anything like this before..but before i go on..what exactly are opals ? what kind os arrangements do they have staying underground, as in food, drinks,. etc. ?
and any idea what the temperature is like there ?