coober pedy underground city
And it is that most of the population of Coober Pedy, of about 3,500 inhabitants of 45 different nationalities, lives underground. All of these people have made a decision to live in a unique way. Free underground exhibitions can be found in the Desert Caves and Umoona Museum on the main street. With little shade above ground and zero plantlife, the natural solution to the arid climate was to move underground! View Deal. Miners soon flocked to the area building mines to extract the gem. Coober Pedy is a mining town. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Volume One, "Federal electoral division of Grey, boundary gazetted 16 December 2011", "Search result for "Coober Pedy (LOCB)" (Record no SA0015214) with the following layers selected - "Suburbs and Localities", "Place names (gazetteer)" and "Road Labels, "District Council of Coober Pedy - Welcome to the Opal Capital of the World", "The etymology of Coober Pedy, South Australia", Opal capital Coober Pedy 'on knife-edge' as desert town faces big water problem, "IMX Celebrates Opening of SA's First Iron Ore Mining District Since 19th Century", Cairn Hill iron ore miner IMX Resources to close South Australian office, focus on Tanzanian exploration, "$20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia, "EDL's Coober Pedy Hybrid Renewable Project wins at 2019 Asia Power Awards", "Three-roomed dugout, including the ground within two metres of the dugout space", "Coober Pedy Catholic Church & Presbytery", "Coober Pedy's desert drive-in cinema a feast for the eyes — and not just on-screen", "Jennifer Davison - The Royal Coober Pedy Historical Society", "Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child - Catholic Church in Australia", Razz and Mark's 'Instant Hotel' Is Like Staying at the Flintstones', Coober Pedy Visitor Information Centre > Climate, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coober_Pedy&oldid=1011060667, Australian Statistical Geography Standard 2016 ID same as Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2020, Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 9 Hutchison Street: Coober Pedy Catholic Church and Presbytery, This page was last edited on 8 March 2021, at 20:17. [8], The first European explorer to pass near the site of Coober Pedy was Scottish-born John McDouall Stuart in 1858. Your curiosity knows no bounds. Wikimedia CommonsThe dry, arid region around Coober Pedy at sunset. The stars above the underground city of 3,500. Reserve now, pay at stay. It is situated on the edge of the erosional scarp of the Stuart Ranges, on beds of sandstone and siltstone 30 metres (98 ft) deep and topped with a stony, treeless desert. The salt lake was a sight to see. [16] This resource was estimated to hold between 3.5 and 223 billion barrels (560×10^6 and 35,450×10^6 m3) of oil, providing the potential for Australia to become a net oil exporter. FlickrThe sign that greets visitors to Coober Pedy, Australia's underground city. [19] There are several motels offering underground accommodation, ranging from a few rooms to the entire motel being a dug-out. The relative humidity rarely gets over 20% on these hot days, and the skies are usually cloud-free. It is also home to around 3,500 people of 45 different nationalities, many of them Europeans who arrived in the 1960s in search of fortune. Life above ground was untenable, so the newcomers did the only thing that made sense: they started digging. Coober Pedy Hotels ; The Underground Motel; Search. The Ghan train serves the town through the Manguri Siding, 42 kilometres (26 mi) from Coober Pedy, which is served by trains once weekly in each direction. Literally. But the real life of the city goes underground, where more than one and a half thousand people are hiding from the … Ali's Underground, Coober Pedy: See 5 traveller reviews, 10 candid photos, and great deals for Ali's Underground, ranked #12 of 17 Speciality lodging in Coober Pedy and rated 4 of 5 at Tripadvisor. Gallery featuring photos of the unforgettable underground town: Coober Pedy, Australia, one of the strangest places people live on earth. But this small city in southern Australia also lays claim to another rarity: most of its inhabitants live underground. The town has a drive-in theatre. The Saints never play home games. Facilities include a fully equipped communal kitchen and coin-operated laundry. [17][18], The town has become a popular stopover point and tourist destination, especially since 1987, when the sealing of the Stuart Highway was completed. 1992. Coober Pedy is located on the Stewart Ridge in South Australia, at the eastern edge of the Great Victoria Desert. Not surprisingly, 3,500 residents in the town are opal industry professionals.