THEY DON’T CALL IT “DOWN UNDER” FOR NOTHING

Welcome to Coober Pedy, a bustling Australian town 1000km north of Adelaide, where most people live underground. On the surface, the place looks pretty deserted . With just a few hotels, a post office, and a police station dotted around, the place has the air of an abandoned “ghost” town. In fact, around 3,500 people live there. It is just that most of them (60 per cent) live below the surface in homes burrowed out of caves. Coober Pedy was established in 1915 following the discovery of opal there. Ninety five per cent of the world’s opal comes from the area. However, people who flocked there to mine the precious stones soon discovered life above ground was pretty tough because of the scorching or often freezing temperatures. In the summer, the temperature generally exceeds 40 degrees Celsius with occasional sand storms adding extra woe . Typical of a desert climate, the days are boiling hot, but the nights are freezing cold. They solved that problem by building “dugouts”, caves dug into the hillsides. Bizarrely, some of the houses even have faux windows to hang their curtains around. Well, you’ve got to love those net curtains! 100 years later, the town has several underground hotels and B&Bs (the Coober Pedy Underground B&B won Australia’s best B&B last year) in addition to palatial underground homes. Then there is the underground church, a gift shop, a few museums, a casino, and, of course, the local inn. The entrances to all the buildings are at ground level, and all the rooms are ventilated with a vertical shaft, keeping the temperature regulated. It all sounds pretty cool, but we are guessing that the phone reception isn’t that fabulous! (Reading text adapted from metro)