Coober Pedy

Coober Pedy was founded in 1915 after a 14 year old boy found opal in the desert while his father was prospecting for gold. The town's name comes from the Kokatha-Antakirinja phrase 'kupa-piti', meaning 'white man's hole'. It still produces around 70 percent of the world's opal supply.

The extreme heat (regularly above 40 degrees in summer) drove the early miners to dig dwellings into the soft sandstone hillsides rather than build above ground. These 'dugouts' maintain a constant temperature of 23 to 25 degrees year round without air conditioning. Today, around 60 percent of Coober Pedy's residents still live underground, and visitors can stay in underground hotels (the Desert Cave Hotel and the Underground Motel are the best known), eat in underground restaurants, and visit underground churches and museums.

The surface of the town is dotted with mounds of mining tailings that look almost lunar. Several films have used the area as a stand-in for alien landscapes, including Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Pitch Black. The Painted Hills and the Breakaways escarpment to the north are some of the most photographed outback landscapes in Australia.

Driving from Adelaide takes around nine hours. Most travellers stay one or two nights as part of a longer outback loop towards Uluru.