coober pedy- a small underground city in Australia, which is located in the central region of the country. It received the title of the world capital of opals thanks to the huge deposits of these minerals, which are cast in iridescent colors. There are approximately 30% of all opal deposits on the planet. No place on Earth can compare with him in this indicator.

This mining town is also known for its unusual underground houses. It is believed that its name has something to do with them. It came from the language of the indigenous people of the country. The combination "kupa-piti" is translated from it as "hole white man».
More than 1,600 people live in the underground "holes" of the town of Coober Pedy, dug at an average depth of 4-5 meters. The main business of the locals is the extraction of precious opals.

The city is located in the Great Victoria Desert, in the south of the country. This is one of the driest and sparsely populated areas of the continent. With the onset of the twentieth century, precious opals began to be actively mined there. Since this place was always hot, drought and sandstorms periodically raged, miners, along with their relatives, began to settle in houses cut down in the mountains. Many of them had a direct entrance to the mine. The conditions in these "apartments" were quite comfortable, no worse than in traditional dwellings. At any time of the year, the temperature in them did not rise above 22-24°C. There were the same, familiar to us rooms. The only thing missing was windows, because due to the extremely high summer temperatures, a maximum of two windows could be made.

When building a dwelling in a town with the largest deposit of noble opals, you can get rich, because approximately 96% of these stones are mined here. Some time ago, a hotel was drilled in Coober Pedy and copies were found worth about $ 360,000.
A valuable deposit was unexpectedly discovered a hundred years ago, in 1915, when they were looking for water sources in the area. The very next year, prospectors began to gather there. It is estimated that approximately 60% of Coober Pedy's population was from European countries. They moved there when the Second ended. World War to work in the mines. So the city became the largest producer of high quality opals in the world and still is.
The distinctive properties of noble opals include iridescent tints. This is due to the diffraction of light on its spatial grating. The high cost of a stone is determined not by its size, but by how unique this play of color is. The value of an opal depends on the number of rays.

There is a legend among the natives that in very ancient times, spirits took away its colors from the rainbow and hid it in opals. The second legend says that the Creator descended to the earth and on the places where his foot stepped, iridescent stones arose.
Now the extraction of stone is carried out only by private entrepreneurs, but this activity still brings the country about 30 million dollars a year.
Previously, opals were mined by hand, using shovels and picks. The rock was extracted with buckets, and along the discovered precious vein it was necessary to crawl in a plastun way.

Most of the mines are located at shallow depths. Their main passages were laid with the help of special boring machines, breaking through tunnels about two meters high. Branches depart from the tunnels. These devices consisted of an engine and gearbox from a small truck. After that, they began to use a machine called "blower". A high power compressor was built into it, which sucks the rock through a pipe placed in the depths. If you turn it off, the barrel opens. So there is a new small hill, or waste heap. At the entrance to the capital of opals, you can see a large sign depicting this car.

In the 80s, the city decided to build an underground hotel. Since that time, every year there has been an influx of tourists. Here you can even visit two underground churches (one of which is Orthodox!).

Among the most visited sights of the capital of opals is the house recently dead person, who was nicknamed Crocodile Harry. He gained popularity due to his countless love affairs and eccentric lifestyle.
Coober Pedy is considered the driest place in Australia. During the year, only 175 millimeters of precipitation falls there. This is more than three times less than in European countries. It almost never rains there, which means that Coober Pedy is not rich in vegetation. There are no big trees and beautiful flowers. You can find only a few shrubs and plants that retain moisture in their tissues (for example, cacti).
However, these conditions do not prevent local residents find fun in nature. They love to play golf, but they can only do it at night when the heat subsides. For this, there are specially equipped fields with mobile grass and spherical lanterns that allow you to see in the dark.
In the city, you can go to underground shops, souvenir shops, museums, bars, a jeweler's workshop, and also see cemeteries.

Coober Pedy has a desert climate. Summer time lasts from December to February, and average temperature reaches 30-40°C. With the onset of night, it drops sharply (up to 20°C). It is very difficult to get used to such changes. Sometimes sandstorms rage here. To escape the heat, locals dig underground apartments for themselves. Many descendants of the first miners decorate the interior of their homes in the “a la naturel” style, which involves covering the walls with a solution of PVA glue. So you can eliminate dust and, moreover, preserve the natural color and texture of the stone. In these unusual apartments, the toilet and kitchen room are located right at the entrance, because there is no underground sewerage in Coober Pedy. All other rooms are usually dug deeper. To support the ceilings in large rooms, columns are built. Their diameter can reach one meter.

Lovers of modern interiors put plaster on the walls and ceilings. Thanks to this design solution, the underground “apartment” looks just like an ordinary one. Residents of the city also prefer to install such a luxury item as an underground pool - a real salvation for those who live in one of the hottest regions on the planet.

The capital of opals has become one of the main points of most of the routes in Australia for tourists. Of particular interest to visitors is the fact that Coober Pedy itself and its surroundings are considered very photogenic, so filmmakers often come here. For example, in 2006, the Australian film Opal Dream was filmed there. In addition, it became the setting for the movie "Pitch Black", and scenes from the movie "Mad Max: Under Thunderdome" were filmed in underground houses.
On the edge of the town is the largest livestock farm on the planet, as well as the famous "Dingo Fence", stretching for 8500 kilometers.

Every mound that can be seen on the surface is connected to the dungeon with a shaft. This is the only way to survive in such an unfavorable climate.
Currently, over 45 nationalities can be found among the inhabitants of Coober Pedy, most of which are Greeks. Drinking water passes through an artesian well, which was drilled 25 kilometers from the city.
There is no common power grid in the opal capital of the world. Diesel generators are used to generate electricity, and the premises are heated with solar water heaters.
This unusual city underground in Australia from a bird's eye view may surprise you not with buildings familiar to our eyes, but with rock heaps, dotted with thousands of dimples dug in the red desert. This is an incredible sight that allows you to feel like you are on another planet.

In one of the driest parts of Australia, where instead of rain there are sandstorms, and there is no water even underground, the Australians have equipped underground city with all the trappings of social life.

In the state of South Australia, on the eastern border of the Great Victoria Desert is the city of Coober Pedy. It got its name from the aborigines, who called the settlement of new Australians in their ancestral lands "the white man's hole". And the city itself arose as a settlement of miners. In 1915, noble opal was discovered in the Stewart Range, and later it turned out that layers of precious stone lie here, amounting to 30% of the world's reserves.

From the heat underground

Climatic conditions of Coober Pedi are very severe. Exhausting heat during the day gives way to a sharp drop in temperature at night. The temperature difference reaches 20 degrees. Clouds of flies stick to the surface of a person. In addition, sandstorms often occur. To hide from the heat and all-penetrating sand, the first settlers of the mining village began to equip their homes in the worked-out mines. Features of the development of the opal deposit required laying shallow horizontal mines in the form of tunnels with branches. Miners with their families began to settle in such sleeves.

Under the ground, real apartments of several rooms were equipped. To keep cool, one or two windows were usually cut through near the front door, thus the air temperature was naturally maintained at about 22-24 degrees.

Churches, shops, workshops, a cemetery were built underground.

Today, a few residents of the city live both in underground dwellings and in above-ground ones, with air conditioners installed to create a comfortable atmosphere. Dug houses are fully equipped modern means comfort - sewerage, electricity, plumbing. There is even a choice in interior decoration - natural, when the walls of rooms cut in stone are simply covered with a special compound for cleanliness, and modern - stone walls are sheathed with plasterboard, and such a house is indistinguishable from other houses in Australia.

main treasure

As already mentioned, the city arose on a deposit of opals. There is a museum, shops, hotels, a small local airport. Feature films are often shot in fantastic surrounding landscapes. In the city and its environs, the surviving remains of scenery, various mechanisms and aircraft remind of this.

But the main treasure in these desert lands is water. The nearest artesian well was dug 25 km from Coober Pedy. No matter how much they searched, there was no water. In the old days, water was brought here by pack caravans and it was worth its weight in gold. Modern residents of the city receive water from a laid water pipe, but its price is much higher than in other regions of the country.

• Iron trees grow in the city - decoration with familiar forms
• The most common form of vegetation is cacti.
• Dug out underground houses are called Dugout
• Churches open to free visit, most importantly, when leaving, do not forget to turn off the light, as requested by the signs at the entrance
• The small population of the city consists of 45 nationalities.
• Blower - a machine-vacuum cleaner for sucking rock from the mine to the surface

How to get there

Coober Pedy is located off the Stewart Highway between Adelaide and Alice Springs. The nearest city, Port Augusta, is 500 kilometers away.

Coober Pedy is a convenient place to take a tour on the way to the Red Center from Adelaide. If desired, in the underground city, you can stay overnight in a local underground hotel. If you are traveling in Australia, you will certainly use the Stewart Highway, which crosses the mainland from south to north, passing through the states of South Australia and Northern Territories, it is simply impossible to drive past Coober Pedy.

Older people probably remember the Soviet film "Kin-Dza-Dza". There was an episode where the main characters are brought to the city. But there is no city as such. There are only small pipes sticking out in the middle of the desert landscape. The people in this film (at least some of them) lived underground, and the pipes served for ventilation. Entire settlements lived literally in the ground, only occasionally getting out to the surface.

So the movie city has a very real prototype. This is the mining town of Coober Pedy, located roughly in the center of the state of South Australia. It lies on the Stuart mountain range, 300 kilometers from national park Lake Air. The surroundings of the city are a deserted and deserted landscape. There are sparsely populated areas for hundreds of kilometers around. To Adelaide (most big city state and the fifth largest in Australia) you need to get 850 kilometers south along the Stewart highway.

Coober Pedy on the map

• Geographic coordinates -29.010474, 134.757343
• Distance from the capital of Australia Canberra is about 1550 km
• Distance to the nearest airport Seduna is about 360 km

All distances are "in a straight line"

And people there really live underground, in specially dug apartments. The decision to live under a layer of earth is dictated by the locals natural conditions. During the day, the air warms up to 40 ° C, and by night the temperature can drop to 7 ° C. Sudden temperature changes make life on the surface not entirely comfortable. And periodic sandstorms further exacerbate the situation.

Here we could not help but deviate from the topic. It seemed to us that these "terribly harsh", downright unbearable conditions are not so terrible. Read about the Pole of Cold in Russian Oymyakon. Here the conditions are really unrealistically difficult. There, even tires on cars can crumble like chocolate, and temperatures of minus 40-50 are quite common.

What, in principle, forced people to go underground in Coober Pedy? After all, Australia is a wonderful continent, there are a lot of places much more suitable for life. Take at least Hyams Beach - a beach with perfectly white sand. Dig in the sand and watch the ocean. Or Fraser Island, where the sand has been fighting the rainforest for hundreds of years. But no, people are drawn to the desert, and even underground. The answer is really simple. There are huge reserves of precious minerals. Opal is why people still live here. It has been mined here since 1915.

This is what opal looks like

In general, for the first time a simple opal was found in these places in 1849 at the height of the gold rush. And full-scale development of deposits began in 1915, when noble opal was already found here. According to scientists, about 30% of the world's reserves of this valuable mineral are located here. Therefore, Coober Pedy is also called the Opal Capital of the World. Opal is widely used in jewelry.

The miners adapted to live in dugouts. The temperature was almost always around 22°C. Often, miners went to work directly from their homes; for this, tunnels were dug directly into the mine. The workers dug entire houses underground, and lived well in them. In addition to dwellings, there is a bar, a museum, churches, an art gallery and even a hotel for tourists who want to experience what it is like to live underground.

The development of technology and technology has allowed more than half of the inhabitants to move to the surface, but there are citizens who still live underground. And they live very well. Their house has everything you need for a comfortable stay - kitchen, living room, bedrooms and even bathrooms. Naturally there is electricity, running water and sewerage. They have such apartments called "Dugout" and are made in two versions. Natural and modern. In the first version, the walls of the housing are only strengthened with special impregnations or an emulsion of ordinary PVA glue. This prevents them from shedding and eliminates dust. In addition, this design creates the illusion of primitiveness. You can take pigments and spread them on the walls of mammoths, or in our case kungur. Modern design involves the creation of familiar rooms, but only underground. In this case, the floor, walls and ceiling are leveled, plastered and poured. The result is a completely modern home. Its undergroundness is betrayed only by the absence of windows. At the beginning, according to tradition, two windows were made near the front door, but then the temperature balance in the room was disturbed. However, now this problem is solved by installing an air conditioner. Everything else, as in any modern house. Sometimes both styles are combined and you can get from the trendy and modern living room to the primitive bedroom.

• translated from the language of the local tribe Coober Pedy means "white man's hole" or "underground white man"
• extraterrestrial desert landscapes have become natural backdrops for some famous films. In particular, scenes from the blockbusters Mad Max. Under Thunderdome" and "Black Hole" were filmed here. Nearby, even a whole starship from the movie "Black Hole" has been preserved.

• The city hosts a number of festivals: the Coober Pedy Race, the Queen of the Desert, and the Opal Festival. And yet all the inhabitants gather annually to celebrate the end of summer with noisy celebrations.
• as of 2011, a little less than 1,700 people lived in the town
• in 1956, the largest opal was found in the Coober Pedy area. Its dimensions are 28 x 12 x 11.5 cm. Weight 17000 carats or 3.45 kilograms familiar to us. The find was valued at 2.5 million Australian dollars. They named this nugget the Olympic Australian Opal (in the original The Olympic Australis Opal) in honor of the then Olympic Games in Melbourne.
• there is an underground cemetery in the city
• There is no water at all in Coober Pedy. Many times people tried to drill wells, but they never managed to get to the water. The region cannot boast of heavy rainfall - they usually fall no more than 150 mm per year. Water is supplied by a 24 km long pipeline from a small settlement nearby (this settlement could not be found on the map, if you have data on this, please let us know)

Coober Pedy photo

Australia. What do we know about the "Green Continent"? Cute koalas and kangaroos, natives, boomerangs, plastic banknotes... But Australia is also a land of opals. And the small town of Coober Pedy in the state of South Australia is its opal capital. It is believed that the opal stone calms the nerves, heals the heart, warns the owner about the presence of poison in food, and even gives the gift of prophecy! ..

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: A unique boulder opal found by miners in Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy is the capital of Australia's "opal rush". © Dmitry Chulov.

The man who first called Australia the "Green Continent" must have been joking. It is green only along the coast, and in the center is a barren desert, the bottom of a parched ancient inland sea. Right in the middle of it is Coober Pedy.

Center map

Movement

By bike

Passing through

South Australia is one of the driest regions of the Fifth Continent. Most of its territory is covered with endless deserts, scrubs and salt marshes. But it is in its depths that the real underground pantry of the country is located.

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: The colorful hills of the Brayways Nature Reserve at sunset. The bowels of the earth under these hills hide great riches. © Dmitry Chulov.

The mining town is lost in the endless desert. Instead of trees, grasses and flowers, there are stones, sand and heat below plus 50. Episodes of films about life after a global catastrophe were filmed here more than once. Even the inscriptions on the fences here are appropriate: “Welcome to Hell!”, Which means “ Welcome to Hell!»

It is located 10 hours north of Adelaide. Here, in this sun-scorched, dusty city, seekers of happiness and adventurers from all over the world come together. After all, Coober Pedy is the capital of Australia's ongoing "opal fever".

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: A miners' car parked in the desert at the entrance to Australia's opal fever capital. © Dmitry Chulov.

Around Coober Pedy, like in a minefield, there are signs. " Don't go near the mines!' are the stern warnings. Area opal mines spread over tens of kilometers around. Over the years of fever here have dug about one and a half million mines! The local landscape is called by the locals " moon valley».

Coming to Australia was his childhood dream. Two years after arriving at Green Continent» Gennady Karpenko ended up in scorched desert. He is a carver: he looks for opals and processes them in his workshop.

Australia produces 95% of all opals in the world. This stone has been familiar to locals since time immemorial. True, Australian aborigines have always bypassed opals - they believe that a spirit with a human head and a snake's body lives underground, luring people with the magical brilliance of multi-colored stones.

Opals were found here by accident in 1915. Now Coober Pedy is the richest deposit in the country. Its name comes from the distorted "Kupa Piti", which in the language of the Australian aborigines means ... "white people in a hole."

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: A sign warning that the surrounding desert has been spontaneously dug up by opal miners. © Dmitry Chulov.

On the belt - a battery, on the forehead - a flashlight, in the hands - an ultraviolet lamp - the standard equipment of the local miner. Gennady agreed to show us the places where he had recently managed to find large opals. There are no security guarantees. Any mine here can collapse at any moment. The search for opals is a dangerous business in which everyone works at their own peril and risk!

Gennady, opal carver: “Crack on this side, see? Sometimes it can be dangerous, everything can collapse here.”

Opals in Coober Pedy are sought in mines at a depth of 25-30 meters. Someone rises to the surface for years with nothing, and someone can turn into a millionaire in one day ...

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: Gennady Karpenko looking for opals in a mine. © Dmitry Chulov.

In the face, Gennady knows every turn of the adit - he spent more than one day here, underground, with a lantern and a pickaxe.

Gennady, opal carver: “I found a few opals in the rock up there, a little - here ...”

His favorite sound in the mine is the crunch of breaking glass. With this, opals are taken out of the rock. After all, opal, in fact, is glass sintered by nature, due to the presence of various elements and inclusions, it plays with bright sparks in the light. This stone is better visible in ultraviolet light. Therefore, Gennady now and then turns on a blue lamp in the darkness of the mine.

Gennady, opal carver: “Sometimes when people blast rock in a mine, then they can miss some of the opals. And you, following them, through their garbage, you can find a vein that will bring 3, 5 10 thousand dollars ... "

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: Mining equipment at work in one of the opal mines. © Dmitry Chulov.

From this one of the niches, by laying explosives, his neighbor miners recently took out opals for ... 380 thousand dollars!

Gennady, opal carver: “No one here asks anyone how much you found, how you sold - this is not accepted in Coober Pedy. There is a lot of cash in this business!”

There are not many places left in the world where you can legally get rich in just one day! Some call it "opal fever", others - fortune, others - playing roulette. In the face, you can walk a few centimeters from the most valuable stone and not find it. And you can accidentally stumble upon an opal vein!

Gennady, opal carver:“When from the wall, where there is nothing, from a small crack suddenly opens such, such a thickness of opal! When they are with color, you just stop breathing! You just forget how you breathe!”

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: Prospector Rade shows opalized shells he found in the ground. © Dmitry Chulov.

Dust, wind and an excavator devouring tens of liters of diesel fuel per day. Many opal seekers, having arrived briefly spend in Coober Pedy all life. You just need to stake out a plot - anyone can do it. Father and son Rade and Roger open pit opals. From the age of 12 (!) my son masterfully manages the excavator bucket. The father, who came here in search of happiness back in 1967, is now over 70. He carefully examines the stones below so as not to miss the cobblestone, which may contain opal, relying on experience and intuition.

Rade, the opal seeker:“I have found black, pink, green, crystal, all kinds of opals. True, I was not as lucky as other miners. I had enough to pay my bills and to live. I must be the biggest loser of all the old people that work at Coober Pedy!”

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: The famous boulder opal found in Coober Pedy. Boulder is a type of opal in the form of a layer in the rock. The world's largest boulders are found in Coober Pedy. © Dmitry Chulov.

The pride of Rade and Roger is a huge " boulder” is the opal they keep at home. There is no other like it in the world! They are in no hurry to sell it and show it only on special occasions.

In small Coober Pedy, there are several dozen shops that sell opals. The most valuable of them are pink and black. Depending on the size and quality, the price of processed opals can reach several tens of thousands of dollars!

Dubica works in one of Coober Pedy's opal shops. Prices here are lower than in big cities Australia: those who sell stones here are those who find and process them themselves.

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: A polished opal that sparkles with multi-coloured sparks in the light. © Dmitry Chulov.

Dubica, salesperson: “This stone is a crystal opal, large in size, transparent and clear. Look, you can see all the colors of the rainbow in it, and the more red there is in the opal, the more valuable it is.”

This stone glows devilishly in the light, its flickering enchants. But during processing, the opal loses up to 2/3 of its volume, and may even crack, losing its value. Opal is as fragile as glass. It is enough to drop it, and the holographic beauty can break into thousands of fragments. Therefore, only experienced craftsmen can work with opal.

COOBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: A cut opal in the hands of a carver. © Dmitry Chulov.

Gennady, opal carver: “If the stone is very expensive, sometimes it can be up to $1,000 per carat, it is very difficult to cut it…”

Cutting is the most critical stage in the processing of opal. Sometimes the master looks at the stone for hours, not knowing how to approach it.

Gennady, opal carver:“Processing an opal is always a surprise, a lottery. You can just cut and get a colorless stone in two parts, and sometimes you see how the stone begins to play in your hands!

Carvers say that opal should be felt with hands, only then the master will be lucky in his work. And luck is just what the Australian town of Coober Pedy, gripped by the “opal fever” of our time, needs so much!

You can watch the video version of this article in the form of a report about Coober Pedy, filmed by me for the program "Their Morals" (NTV), you can here:

Write in the comments what else would you like to know more about Australia?

They live underground, grow cacti in their gardens, and play golf at night - this is how life is like for the inhabitants of a small town in the Australian desert. We are talking about the world capital of opals - the mining town of Coober Pedy. Residents of a town in the southern Australian desert that sometimes sees temperatures in the shade in the summer reach 40°C have found an easy way to beat the heat. In their houses, even in the worst heat, it is always cool, but not at all because they use air conditioners, moreover, they do not need to wash windows or hang blinds on them to avoid the prying eyes of their neighbors, but all because the inhabitants of Kuber- The peds build their houses... underground. Take a look with us into the opal underground city of Coober Pedy.

16 PHOTOS

1. Most likely, the name of the city is associated with its unusual houses underground. In the Aboriginal language, koopa piti, from which the name Coober Pedy is derived, means ‘white man’s hole’. About 1,700 people live in the city, who are mainly engaged in the extraction of opals, and their houses are nothing more than underground “holes” made in sandstone at a depth of 2.5 to 6 meters. (Photo: Les Pullen/South Cape Photography).
2. Due to the lack of underground sewerage, the toilet and kitchen in the houses are located immediately at the entrance, i.e. at ground level. Bedrooms, other rooms and corridors are usually dug deeper. The ceilings in the large rooms support columns up to 1 meter in diameter. (Photo: Les Pullen/South Cape Photography).
3. Building a house in Coober Pedy can even make its owner rich, because there is the largest deposit of precious opals. Deposits in Australia, mainly in Coober Pedy, account for 97 percent of the world's production of this mineral. Several years ago, during the drilling of an underground hotel, stones worth about 360 thousand dollars were found. Their detection was made possible by modern surveying equipment - enough to know which one. (Photo: Les Pullen/South Cape Photography).
4. Roofs of Coober Pedy. A familiar sight and distinctive feature of the underground city are the ventilation holes sticking out of the ground. (Photo: Robyn Brody/flickr.com).
5. The opal deposit in Coober Pedy was discovered in 1915. A year later, the first miners began to arrive there. It is believed that about 60 percent of Coober Pedy residents were from the South and of Eastern Europe who came there after World War II to work in the mines. For almost a hundred years, this city has been the world's largest producer of High Quality opals. (Photo: Les Pullen/South Cape Photography).
6. Underground church in Coober Pedy. (Photo: Jacqui Barker/flickr.com).

Since the 80s, when an underground hotel was built in Coober Pedy, it has been visited by thousands of tourists every year. One of the most visited places in the city of opals was the house of his recently deceased famous resident nicknamed Crocodile Harry - an eccentric, lover of alcohol and an adventurer who became famous for his many love affairs.

7. Both the city and its suburbs, for various reasons, are very photogenic, which is why filmmakers are attracted there. Coober Pedy became the filming location for the 2006 Australian drama Opal Dream. Also in the underground houses of the city, scenes for the film “Mad Max. Under the dome of thunder. (Photo: donmcl/flickr.com).
8. Average annual rainfall in Coober Pedy is only 175 mm (in the middle lane in Europe, for example, about 600 mm). This is one of the driest areas in Australia. There is almost no rain here, and therefore the vegetation is very sparse. Not found in the city tall trees, only rare shrubs and cacti grow. (Photo: Rich2012)
9. Residents, however, do not complain about the lack of outdoor entertainment. They spend their free time playing golf, although due to the heat they have to play at night. (Photo: Les Pullen/South Cape Photography).
10. In Coober Pedy, there are also two churches underground, souvenir shops, a jewelry workshop, a museum and a bar. (Photo: Nicholas Jones/Flickr.com).
11. Coober Pedy is located 846 kilometers north of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. (Photo: George Sharp/Flickr.com).
12. Coober Pedy has a desert climate. In summer, from December to February, the average temperature is 30°C, and sometimes reaches up to 40°C. At night, the temperature drops sharply, to about 20°C. Sandstorms are also possible here. (Photo: doctor_k_karen/Flickr.com).