One of Australia's most famous outback towns, Coober Pedy, 850km (530 miles) northwest of Adelaide, is an unusual settlement in the heart of an extremely hostile landscape. Frequent dust storms and a colourless desert landscape littered with abandoned mines contribute to the town's desolate appearance, yet the small population has a cultural mix of over 42 nationalities.
 
Opal was discovered here in 1915, and today Coober Pedy produces 70% of the world's supply . Mining claims, limited to one per person, can measure no more than 100m by 50m (320ft by 160ft). For this reason opal mining is the preserve of individuals, not large companies, and this adds to the town's 'frontier' quality.
 
Coober Pedy's name comes form the Aboriginal 'kupa piti' meaning white man in a hole, and is apt indeed. Not only the mines, but also houses, hotels and churches are built underground. This way, the residents escape the extreme temperatures of up to 50 degrees centigrade during the day and zero at night. This gives the town an awful front cover to be judged by as it hardly looks like a town at all with small dusty buildings scattered along the road, but of course all its goodness is hidden underground. This was partly the main reason we wanted to come and stay here, the fact that most of the hotels and hostels were actually under the ground. We'd seen pictures and it all looked quite strange, there's even a campsite underground. Crazy or what?!
 
Luckily we managed to get a room in the Radeka Downunder Underground Motel and Backpacker Inn which was just what we were after . The kitchen, lounge and toilets were all on the ground level but the bedrooms were all 30ft under ground. Even as we checked in we had to go down a big slope as the reception and the gift shop were underground. The man who runs this place can only be described as possibly the biggest stereotype of what a miner here would look like. He was an old skinny man, with a brown leather cowboy hat, big grey beard, hunched back, filthy dirty vest, old ripped denim jeans and big leather boots on. He was a very friendly, chatty man who had lived in this tiny little town for 35 years, mining for opals for most of it before realising you can make more money from the hostels than you can crawling around dirty mines all day. 
 
We went to check out our room for the night, it was quite strange going down 3 flights of stairs into the cool, dusty smelling corridors. Nothing had been painted or decorated so all the walls of the tunnels were still as raw as when they were first cut out. The long corridor had rooms all along it with arch way doors, just with out any doors . It was so quiet and eerie, you could hear if anyone else so much as spoke, sneezed or moved in any part of the tunnels, we may as well have been in a 200 person dorm but it didn't matter, it was still pretty cool. It did feel like we were in a prison or something though. We made our beds and went for a look about as it was only about 4pm. 
The man at reception showed us where things were on the map and told us about what you can see and do here. It turns out that anyone can come and dig for opals. There's a section that's free for tourists to go and dig in or if you really want a go anyone can buy one of the $200, 100x50m plots, that land is then yours to dig for a whole year. Each person can only buy one plot of land so we joked about buying one each next to each other and coming digging for a year but let's be honest here, although there's some big money to be made here there's also lots to be lost where people have struck it lucky early on in their mining careers but then not found hardly anything for more than 10 years after and it's hard, dusty, physical work - not my idea of fun at all! We'll stick to being tourists I think!!
 
We set off on our little walk to see another underground hotel which has an underground bar and arcade . We then decided to go for a drink in the pizza restaurant across the road which the man is our hostel had recommended. The pizzas looked amazing so we scrapped the beans on toast idea and had a big 14" one between us. It was delicious!
 
Our night's sleep in an underground dorm wasn't the best night sleep we'd had but it was alright and still a fun experience. This was until me and Gareth nearly slept in because Matt got up thinking it was 7am so he had plenty of time for a shower and a cup of tea whilst we slept in, but he'd forgotten to change his clock back to South Australian time which was an hour ahead of the Northern Territory so when we figured this out Gareth and I had a mad rush to get up and ready as it was now 8:40am and the tour of the opal mines started at 9!
 
Luckily we were ready in time and the tour was only a few minutes away. The tour was of an old mine which gives you a real experience of how the miners work and live, even still to this day. First off we were given a demonstration of some of the machinery they use to sort out the rocks and the opals . The main one we got to see was what's known as a blower! It's called a blower when it's kind of a sucker really. As they dig away at the rock underground to get rid of all the rubble, they use a blower which sucks all the rocks up to the surface. As it's sucked up, it's collected into a large steel drum and then tipped on to the floor. Seeing this explained why massive areas around here are filled with hundreds and hundreds of piles of rubble. It's quite strange as you drive past wondering what they are there for, it looks as if there's been an overexcited dog digging away for a few years. 
 
After this we got our hard hats on and headed down into the mine. It's just a museum now so they use stuffed mannequins to show how they used to work. It looks awful for them as they're all stuck in corners with pick axes digging away. It's easy to see a bit of opal in the rock if you find any as it stands out with its shiny colours from the pale creamy colour of the rock. It showed us how men would chip away following opal lines and how the rubble was moved away . After the mine, the walk took us into an old miners house. It's practically a 2 bed room bungalow just 30ft underground with posters and pictures on the walls as there's no sun light. The miners would practically live in the mines as they were desperate to strike it lucky. To be fair, the house had everything you would want with a kitchen, lounge, bedrooms and full bathroom all with electricity from the generators on the ground. I personally wouldn't like it as it just didn't seem right and always smelt of mine dust. 
After about an hour and a half in the museum, we headed outside to do a bit of noodling! This is what they call it when you rummage through a pile of rubble looking for the opals. We sat digging away in this pile of rocks, wetting them all as you can't see unless you wet all the rocks. We found a little handful each of what we thought looked like opals in about 15 minutes so we took them in the shop for examining. It turned out most of the pieces weren't opals but some of them were, obviously they were such small pieces they weren't worth hardly anything but we bagged them up and kept them as our own little souvenirs.
 
Before we headed off and hit the road again, we went to see a famous film prop which is still kept here. There's a film called "Pitch Black" starring Vin Diesel which was filmed here a few years ago and they've left the crashed spaceship here in the car park of a jewellers, strangely, but it was interesting to see. It turns out this tiny little town and dusty area has been used for quite a few films in the past with Pitch Black and Mad Max the most noticeable ones we knew of. 
 
This is a very crazy, surreal little place but we enjoyed our quick visit and we'd definitely recommend it to others as it's certainly something different and after all, how often is it you get to sleep in an old mine tunnel 30feet under ground?!