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Coober Pedy, the Australian mining town where residents live underground (2020)
- osazuwa 5y agoFound one on Airbnb https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/9906314 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/9906314
- vermilingua 5y agoHaving stayed in an "underground" (nowadays we'd call it passive design) BnB out there, it really is remarkably comfortable compared to the outside temperature. During the days it's bakingly hot, and freezing and dry at night; but always pleasant in the rooms, with no need for A/C or heating. Ventilation is a bit of a problem as you might expect, it got a bit stuffy.
- danuker 5y agoBy "stuffy" do you mean just stale air, or is there also excess humidity?
- prawn 5y agoBeen decades since I stayed in a cave hotel in Coober Pedy, but I have stayed in a "trog" home in France and a cave BnB in Turkey - as much as the stuffiness, it felt like there was mineral-heavy dust always in the air, from the stone walls? My nose was quite sensitive to that.
- alcover 5y ago> no need for A/C or heating Soon to be very valuable... I think houses without a basement will drop in value in the near future.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wanderingstan 5y agoInteresting engineering note at the end of the article: “However, most mining is fully mechanized today.”
- _emacsomancer_ 5y agoThat note made me wonder what exactly mechanized opal mining looks like.
- jsqu99 5y agoCoober Pedy was highlighted in an episode of Instant Hotel on Netflix here https://www.netflix.com/title/81023011 https://www.netflix.com/title/81023011
- yurishimo 5y agoIt was a good episode! I can hear the locals talking in my head just remembering it. It’s worth a watch if you’re into architectural television.
- daurnimator 5y agoThe council there recently sold off properties where rates had not been paid: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-16/coober-pedy-auction-results/100217652 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-16/coober-pedy-auction-r...
- vr46 5y agoI’ve been here and it’s very interesting talking to locals and seeing the place. The article SHOULD have mentioned the golf club! It’s basically desert and rocks and twinned with St Andrews! Brilliant!
- meheleventyone 5y agoYeah it’s an otherworldly place. When we visited it also absolutely heaved down with rain which was a surprise!
- vr46 5y agoMust have been a bit of a relief, too!
- superfunny 5y agoScenes from the 1980s movie "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" were filmed at Coober Pedy
- pdpi 5y agoTom Scott had a fascinating video about the town a while back. Well, it was supposed to be about the town, and its water supply in particular, but became a video about the reliability of research and videos you find online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaGTFeibOEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaGTFeibOEk
- SkyPuncher 5y agoErik Anders Lang also has a neat video of their "golf" course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpr0ShaQak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpr0ShaQak
- hncommenter13 5y agoSome additional background on the reciprocal rights they enjoy with St. Andrews in Scotland: https://www.espn.com.au/golf/story/_/id/13173734/st-andrews-kooky-deal-opal-fields-golf-club https://www.espn.com.au/golf/story/_/id/13173734/st-andrews-...
- jamiek88 5y agoWell that was delightful!
- zbrozek 5y agoI'm an American citizen and I needed to go to the hospital in Coober Pedy in 2009. It was after hours, so I rang the bell up front and a cheerful nurse responded on the intercom. My case was deemed sufficient to merit a response, so the nurse and a doctor both came over at once and booted up the place. I got my exam, some crutches, and a prescription in about an hour and $45. Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you're about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap. Makes it hard to find and fidget with coins.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you're about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap. Seems like you'd get used to it quickly. In Chinese apartments (in Shanghai, at least), there is a small water heater dedicated to the shower. It stores a certain amount of water at a temperature you configure, and when it runs out, your shower will be cold. (You're expected to set it much hotter than you want the shower, and mix it with cold water, which is unlimited, to get the shower temperature you want.) This means it's impossible to take a two-hour hot shower. But it also means the showering process doesn't include "step 0: wait a few minutes for hot water to start coming out of the shower". When you turn on the hot water, you get hot water. It's really soured me on the American system.
- echelon 5y ago> It's really soured me on the American system. Tankless hot water systems have been available for awhile. Sounds like this is what you want to install. Couple this with a pump/recirculation system and you'll have instant, endless hot water from any faucet or shower. Granted, you won't have this option if you're renting and at the mercy of a landlord. But you can look for this in future apartments. Some condo associations won't let you install them as it requires additional external piping for air intake and exhaust.
- ldkdmsksk 5y agoyou know you can install tankless heaters at the shower in the US if you want instant hot water? sinks too, theyre even easier. you can find kits at Home Depot.
- bbarley 5y agoMaking your underground home in sandstone reminds me of Minecraft in real life! Very cool (literally).
- reaperducer 5y agoIn the 1800's and early 1900's, it was not uncommon for miners in the American southwest to build homes into the ground, simply because there was no other material available. If you go to Shoshone, California, you can wander around their abandoned cave homes. There's a bunch across the street from the Inyo County Sheriff's substation. Just go up the dirt road, around the hill, past the cemetery.
- seanhandley 5y agoI loved visiting Coober Pedy. It reminded me of The Flintstones - you're in a room carved out of the rock and yet there's a TV in the corner. Also it's a real "prospector town" since the massive mining companies consider it cost inefficient to mine there at scale so it's full of characters.
- tppiotrowski 5y agoAt the time I visited in 2015, the residents told me that boring out a family home cost in the realm of $150,000 AUD which seemed like a bargain compared to the (still?) red hot Sydney real estate market.
- viraptor 5y agoSure, but then you end up living in Coober Pedy. For slightly more you can live in a basic house/unit regionally, or for twice the price, a nice house in a nice regional town.
- foxpurple 5y agoYou couldn’t convince people to move to Coober Pedy if you paid them $150,000 to move there. The place is an interesting tourist attraction but the last place you would want to live.
- nl 5y agoThere’s an opal line going right through the centre of Coober Pedy. Most who built there made a profit from the boring part, and extensions are a good way to make money too.
- saagarjha 5y agoI have nothing to add but another pop culture reference from my childhood: Coober Pedy is one of the locations that the Cahill siblings visit in the sixth 39 Clues book, In Too Deep.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bitwize 5y agoSounds like one of the many whistlestops your party will stop in to rest, buy equipment, and sidequest in a JRPG. And the name makes it sound like a great place to host a KubeCon.
- bumbledraven 5y agohttps://archive.is/B8uH6 https://archive.is/B8uH6
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- shoo 5y agosee also: flash forward podcast episode, could we all live underground? https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2021/05/25/could-we-all-live-underground/ https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2021/05/25/could-we-all-live...
- neither_color 5y agoIf you're in the western hemisphere and want to experience cave homes without going all the way to Australia I highly recommend Goreme and all of Cappadocia in Turkey. They have hotels built into cave homes thousands of years old, open air museums with cave cities and complexes from thousands of years ago. I went there because my girlfriend wanted to ride hot air balloons but I ended up loving it and being blown away by all the ancient ruins https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/357/gallery/ https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/357/gallery/
- prawn 5y agoI also highly recommend that area. My brother and I had an amazing day where we climbed out of the regular paths and walked around for dozens of kilometres exploring valleys and climbing up into remote carved corridors and rooms. Found some incredible terrain. If you're in the USA, you can find something similar to Cappadocia in Bandolier National Monument, New Mexico. Similar geology in the carved volcanic ash/tuff, plus a nice campground within walking distance.
- twelvechairs 5y agoRelated - China's loess houses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaodong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaodong
- askvictor 5y agoAlso, Cappadocia in Turkey: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia
- RickJWagner 5y agoThat's cool! I do wonder about a few things.... - How does the sewage system work? - Do worms come into the living spaces?
- 6nf 5y agoIt's solid sandstone, there's no soil for worms.
- nsonha 5y agoKind of funny that it mentions the distance to Canberra instead of the state capital Adelaide. No one cares where Canberra is except for politicians, sorry canberrans
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoIsn't Canberra the capital because all the other cities couldn't agree on who gets to be the capital? Like what happened with Washington?
- nsonha 5y agoyes Melbourne and Sydney competed, and they settled for some nowhere in the middle, literally.
- prawn 5y agoI grew up going on opal fossicking holidays as a kid - Coober Pedy, Mintabie, White Cliffs, Lightning Ridge, etc. We'd camp somewhere and then spend the days digging around getting filthy and finding opal, which was great fun. My maternal uncle was an opal dealer at one point in life and both he and my paternal grandfather had opal cutting/polishing setups in their sheds at some point. My dad did a work placement up there for a few months, renting an underground place. Beside the curiosity of underground living, Coober Pedy is a grim place. Hot, dry, dirty. You couldn't pay me to live there. There's a lot of cheap accommodation on real estate sites as a result. I passed through last year on an outback trip, and stopped there for my kids to dig around. Way back, there were countless places you could "go noodling" (fossicking) but best bet last time seemed to be Jewellers Shop Road: https://goo.gl/maps/3thJiKfzY1YQaxkY6 https://goo.gl/maps/3thJiKfzY1YQaxkY6 It's picked pretty clean, but we found a few chips (small pieces) with colour (as opposed to less valuable forms like "potch") - you just have to be patient and have fairly focused kids! Not sure how active the surrounding area is these days. Mostly seems to be idle blowers (vac-based machines that bring material up from shafts) and mullock heaps. I think the heavy action has progressively moved up to other opal fields a few miles out of town. The story I always liked was about opal showing up under UV lighting. They'd rip up material from shafts with blowers and pass it along a conveyor belt for pickers to watch with UV lights and grab at opal as it went by. Only issue was that scorpions also glowed... You can see prospectors talking about using this method here: https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=18030 https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?... Probably my favourite memory was a place called Grasshopper in Mintabie. The operators would blast in an open cut mine with dynamite, and then huge grading machines would drag the leftover scraps up to an area they let the public pick over looking for smaller pieces of opal. We were like birds showing up on a lawn after it's been mown. Another spot was Concrete/Cement Hill. My little brother (5yo at the time?) had become bored finding nothing and decided to make a cave house for a caterpillar he'd found. While the rest of us toiled with heavy tools, he mucked around with this bloody caterpillar, and found two pieces of opal worth $500-1000 in the process...
- jupp0r 5y agoCool stories, thanks for sharing. Reminds me of some places in the California desert (Trona comes to mind, just without the underground houses).
- 8bitsrule 5y agoThis 3-minute video is better than the BI download and read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2pvCldIi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2pvCldIi0
- ecdavis 5y agoWhite Cliffs is a similar town in New South Wales, though an order of magnitude smaller. Worth a visit if you're spending some time in the Broken Hill area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs,_New_South_Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs,_New_South_Wales
- Perenti 5y agoMy grandfather was the first white person born in White Cliffs. He didn't see another white kid until he was 12 years old. Due to his running with the indigenous kids, he became a great bushman, knowing law and language.
- sandebert 5y agoPeople living in places like this must have great protection for some disasters, such as if the moon blew up suddenly and without warning.
- iamtedd 5y agoHey, fellow connoisseur! Points fingers at my and your noses.
- prawn 5y agoIn one way, I guess. But only if they had a stash of tinned food. There wouldn't be much in the way of well-stocked supermarkets up there to raid, and then you'd have little to no access to water or growing your own food. I'd probably take my chances almost anywhere else than ride out a shock and then have to survive in that area!
- bonkabonka 5y agoReminds me of Ellinwood, KS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqGk3b-9wkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqGk3b-9wkQ
- stickfigure 5y agoI'm struggling with this sentence: The town of Coober Pedy is only accessible by a small airstrip, by coach tour or private car, and via the Ghan railway line running between Darwin and Adelaide. So... it's "only" accessible by air, automobile, or rail? Does their readership travel exclusively by steamship? Camel?
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoI would guess they prefer major airstrips to fly directly into? Maybe the implication of small airstrip is that it is only chartered planes and therefore super expensive? But yeah, I also thought that was funny
- prawn 5y agoEven then, you can fly from the nearest capital Adelaide in two hours for AU$300. Anyone sane is likely to be doing it by road as part of a trip from Adelaide to Uluru/Alice Springs/Darwin.
- austhrow743 5y agoEven just "private car". What an odd way to say you drive there. Aka the only way to get to most towns. Having a railway and airstrip makes Coober Pedy more well connected than most. I think that might be the most rarely leaves megacities sentence I've ever read.
- brabel 5y agoIt is accessible by car, but only after 850km (528 miles) driving through mostly empty desert. I guess the author wanted to convey the isolation of the town, but the wording just turned out very awkward because yeah, despite the huge distances from anywhere else, the place is actually quite accessible if you have the time to spend on the way there (or the money to get a plane there somehow).
- nmcveity 5y agoA ticket on the Ghan starts at around $2600, it's a luxury service ... it's not "rail" like you might suppose. It _is_ a weird sentence though. I guess they wanted to say its only accessible by road? But that's also a bit weird as that describes 98% of towns in Australia.
- uwagar 5y agocoober pedy means 'white man in a hole' with all that going around, i laughed
- crashbunny 5y agoMy favourite tale is about how the kangaroo got its name. The story goes, way back when, the white settlers/invaders were going around with aborigines asking them what different plants and animals were called. The white fella pointed to a kangaroo and asked what's that called? the aboriginal said "kangaroo" which in his language translated to "i don't know", and so it was recorded and why we now called them kangaroos. unfortunately it's not true :( kangaroo is from an aboriginal language, but it doesn't mean "i don't know"
- nineteen999 5y agoWait until you find out where the "Moomba" festival in Melbourne got its name.
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