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| Coober Pedy
from The Big Winch |
Coober Pedy
Fascinating opal town where most of the
residents live underground
Of all the opal mining towns in Australia there
is none quite like Coober Pedy. It is, for
starters, much larger than other notable places
like White Cliffs or Lightning Ridge or
Andamooka and it is this size which has produced
a diversity of people and activities guaranteed
to keep the visitor engrossed for at least a
day. There's the grassless golf course, the
underground church, the noodling for gems on
mullock heaps, the tourist shops, the expensive
and sophisticated accommodation, the mixture of
nationalities, the frenetic searching for
wealth. And all this is set against a backdrop
of one of the harshest environments in
Australia.
Colin Thiele in his novel The Fire in the
Stone seemed to get to the essence of the town
when he wrote: 'The opal fields lay six hundred
miles northwest of Adelaide, midway between Port
Augusta and Alice Springs. A flat, bare
landscape it was for the most part, with
undulations here and there and flat-topped hills
and breakaways and wind-swept plains. An old
land, eroded and wrinkled, worn down over
endless ages, peneplain on peneplain, until even
the hills were remnants of ancient plains. And
in the sides of the slopes, cut into every knoll
and knob, were doorways and entrances and
burrows as if the whole place was inhabited by
five foot high rabbits walking about on their
hind legs.'
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| Gopher holes
at Coober Pedy |
Coober Pedy is located 846 km north of
Adelaide and 213 m above sea level. It has an
average annual rainfall of 139 mm.
About 80 per cent of the population of Coober
Pedy now live underground. The reason for this
is that the temperature can rise to 50°C in
summer and it has been known to rise to 60°C. To
most outsiders the idea of living underground
sounds terribly primitive. In fact the motels
which have been built underground are as good
any built above ground. The floors are tiled and
the mechanical equipment which digs out the
rooms leaves attractive patterns in the red and
white walls which are sealed to prevent dust and
decay. There is certainly no likelihood of a
sudden cave in. A good, new underground house in
Coober Pedy with five rooms can be constructed
by a tunnelling machine for around $25 000.
At the moment there are about 4000 people
living in and around the town and over 45
nationalities are represented. The majority of
the population are Greek, Yugoslav and Italian
(the town has a remarkable similarity to a dusty
Mediterranean village) with many Chinese buyers
of opals.
There are no large companies operating in the
area and this has been maintained by the fact
that a mining lease can only be acquired for an
area of 50 square metres and then the miner is
obliged to work at his lease for about 20 hours
per week.
The opals at Coober Pedy were discovered by a
teenager, Willie Hutchinson (the main street is
named after him), in 1915 and by 1916 miners had
moved to the area. It is claimed that the first
people to live underground where miners who had
been soldiers in Europe during World War 1. Used
to living in trenches they knew the climatic
advantages gained from living in the constant
temperature of a dugout.
The town was officially named by the local
Progress and Mining Association in 1922. The
most widely accepted translation of the
Aboriginal name is that 'coober' means either
boy, uninitiated man or white man (all of which
may well be interchangeable) and 'pedy' means
hole or rock hole. Thus Coober Pedy is a
description of what the local Aborigines
regarded as peculiar activities (both mining and
living underground) and so the town means 'white
men down holes'.
Progress in the town has been slow. All
development has come a bad second when compared
to the need to find opals. For example the town
has only had a regular water supply since 1985.
The water comes from an artesian basin and in
1990 cost $22.00 per 4 000 litres.
Things to see:
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| Miners
fossicking for opals at Coober Pedy
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Coober Pedy
There are a number of truly remarkable
attractions around Coober Pedy and the most
sensible, and most reasonably priced, way of
seeing them is to take a bus trip which usually
lasts for about four hours.
Crocodile Harry
The highlights include a visit to the
underground house of a man calling himself
Crocodile Harry. This wonderful old lecher (his
walls are festooned with the addresses of girls
who he claims to have seduced) declares himself
to be Arvid Von Blumentals, a Latvian Baron who
was forced to leave his country after World War
II. He claims to have worked as a crocodile
hunter in Northern Australia before coming to
Coober Pedy to fossick for opals in about 1975.
Although his story seems implausible - a good
piece of bush mythology - it is interesting to
note that Roger Jose, the Hermit of Borroloola,
who lived in a damaged 1000 gallon tank at
Borroloola on the Gulf of Carpentaria in the
Northern Territory until his death in 1963,
reportedly sold his unusual accommodation to a
crocodile hunter named Harry Blumental. Are
these two one and the same person? And are all
of Harry's larger than life stories true?
Crocodile Harry's underground house featured
in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and before they
left the crew created a singing sculpture out of
metallic trash which they called 'The
Orchestra'. It rattles in the breeze.
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| The Catacomb
Underground Church |
Coober Pedy Underground Catacomb Anglican
Church
At the eastern end of Coober Pedy is the town's
famous Underground Catacomb Anglican Church
which is a unique expression of the materials
and activities of the local area. The altar is
made like a winch and both the crucifix and the
lectern are made out of mulga wood. Behind the
altar are two air vents.
The Big Winch and the Oldtimers Mine
Nearby are the town's two overt tourist
attractions. The Big Winch (a good quality gift
shop) and the Oldtimers Mine which shows
underground mining and some of the old equipment
which was used. It also has an opal reef on
display. When the door was being cut they came
across a seam of opals in the wall.
The Underground Pottery
The Underground Pottery is another popular
tourist shop. It has some superb photographs of
the area for sale. But don't be fooled. The
pottery may be locally made but the clay comes
from Melbourne.
Coober Pedy Golf Course
No visit to Coober Pedy would be complete
without seeing the local Golf Course where there
is not a blade of grass on the fairways and the
greens are oiled sand.
There is an excellent book on the town by
Kerry E Medway titled Coober Pedy: Opal
Wonderland of Australia which covers both the
modern town and the history of the place from
the first discovery of opal.
