How about a stay in an underground hotel? Coober Pedy is located 846 km north of Adelaide and 685 km south of Alice Springs in South Australia. It's a famous opal area and people who visit often are seduced by the lifestyle as much as by the lure of striking it rich.

Friends of ours visited recently to look for a suitable mine to buy. Their plan was to use it as their winter hideaway. Spend the winter months digging for opals that will (hopefully) finance the rest of the year. Nice idea ...

Living underground in Coober Pedy The name Coober Pedy is an English form of an aboriginal name Kupa Pita, which means “White man in a hole or burrow" a reference to the Europeans' way of coping with the extreme conditions. This is in one of the most desolate, waterless, almost vegetation-less, places in the world. Then there are the howling winds and extreme heat which takes the temperature up to 125° Fahrenheit (52°C) for 3 to 4 months of the year. No wonder the locals dig themselves cool cave-homes beneath the searing landscapes. The temperature stays at a pleasant 25 C all year - and there are no air-conditioning costs!

Visit for more information on this fascinating place or to see a little of Lorraine and Dieter Sternberg's Opal Cave.

Coober Pedy's other claim to fame is that is was used in the filming of the Mad Max films ... Must be something about the terrain that makes it the ideal spot to film movies about the end of the world ... or Mars. The latest film being shot stars Val Kilmer in a tale about the first piloted mission to Mars.

Recently, cast and crew of the Warner Brothers film "Red Planet" have been shooting in the bleak, desolate, near featureless terrain about 15 klms from the town. It has hardly any vegetation and, according to Trevor McLeod, special projects officer for the town council, "Areas around here look almost identical to Mars Pathfinder photos. One place up the road from here is called Moon Plain, because it looks just like the surface of the moon."

Coober Pedy was also used in the film, "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," and this was one of the rare times it wasn't the backdrop for a nuclear disaster!

Just because you're visiting a lunar landscape, doesn't mean you have to forego life's little pleasures - Coober Pedy also boasts its own golf course. The course has no trees or greenery but it does have nine holes dug in dirt mounds of sand, diesel and oil. The fairway is marked by a grove in the moonscape and players tee off a tiny piece of Astroturf they carry. Who said there was nothing to do?

Travel to Australia

Digging Deep at Coober Pedy