Coober Pedy, South Australia outback

Coming south from Northern Territory and entering South Australia the first form of settlement you can find is a weird place, something that looks unreal but it's not.

People live underground, leave everything they have and try to make a fortune mining all around.

689 km south of Alice Springs there is the town of Coober Pedy, also known as Opal Capital of the World. Discovered in 1914 by Willie Hutchinson by accident, he was desperately looking for water and he ended up finding Opal and a waterhole nearby. The first Opal rush took place in 1919 and the selling started in 1920 when the first buyers visited the place. Since then Coober Pedy started to grow and now it is a multi cultural mining community with 3500 people, coming from over forty different nationalities.The community expanded significantly during the 1960's when many European migrants made their way to the town, hoping in a big fortune and a different lifestyle. Some of them were lucky enough and "grew money from the ground", becoming multi millionaire, some other are still hoping their wishes come true, some other left the area miserably.

Coober Pedy is an underground town, houses were built underground, churches, shops and accommodation are underground and everybody can experience to sleep underground in the case they stop for the night. Being in the very outback area Coober Pedy is always hot during summer and the underground house was a way used to escape from the arid land and have a bit of fresh during the day, while during the night, as well as winter, the temperature stayed quite comfortable, totally around 24 degree night and day, year around. 

In recent years Coober Pedy has become one of Australia's most important pre historic fossil sites: fossils date back to 115 millions of years ago were found by opal miners in the area. Fossils and Opal confirmed the theory that central Australia was once covered by a great inland sea that created the Great Artesian Basin. 

Many attractions entertain the visitors and other fantastic spots can be reached from Coober Pedy, as the Moon Plain, the Dog Fence, believed to be the longest continual construction in the world with the purpose of protecting the ship country in the south from the Dingo in the north, the Painted Desert, the Flinders Ranges with Oodnadatta and Lake Eyre North, the biggest lake in Australia, dry for most of the time, that covers almost % of the territory and is located between Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.