Guest Column by GeoT
Dateline: 09/19/00
Dynamite for sale at the Safeway? An Underground Motel? A land surface that looks as though it resulted from a reverse sort carpet bombing? Where in the world could things like this be found?! It would have to be a rather unusual place with rather unusual geography and, perhaps, somewhat unusual people living there.
It is all of these.
It is in one of the most desolate, waterless, almost vegetation-less, places in the world. Add to that howling winds, and extreme heat. 125° Fahrenheit (52°C) for 3 to 4 months of the year! There must be a reason for 2500 people to live in such hostile conditions. There is.
So where is such a place? Doesn’t sound much like a Paradise in the Pacific Islands! It isn’t!
The place is in South Australia and the reason people live there is economic. The wealth is contained in a gemstone called opal.
Opals are semi-precious gems composed of silica, but with a very unusual light refracting property called, appropriately, opalescence. Silica-rich solutions in groundwater deposited this material in cavities in existing rock, but in a very unusual way. The silica is in the form of tiny spheres, and if these spheres become aligned in layers, the light refracted from them becomes a prism-like display of the spectrum. Beautiful ‘opalescence’! It’s in demand for settings in rings, and jewelry of many descriptions.
Here is how it came about: In 1915 (some say 1911) a party prospecting for gold at the edge of the Great Victoria Desert some 500 miles northwest of Adelaide discovered something very different. Making camp one night, a young member of the expedition found a stone with remarkable light refracting characteristics. The focus quickly switched from gold to opals. Within a short time the settlement of the Stuart Range Opal Field was founded. In 1920 the name was changed to Coober Pedy. It was declared to be a town in 1960. Actually, Coober Pedy is an English form of an aboriginal name Kupa Pita, which means “White man in a hole or burrow”. Returning soldiers from WW I and its trench warfare had the obvious answer to living in hostile conditions. Living below the surface has its advantages! The nomadic Aborigines must have looked on with great amusement to see people digging, and then living in, the holes they had dug to escape the extreme heat. That lifestyle continues to this day the centuries have changed, but the geography hasn’t.
Most of the world’s opals (photos) come from Coober Pedy and surrounding opal fields. As with any mining venture, times boom and bust. In the late 1930s and 1940s a depression hit and little mining activity occurred. Then, in 1946, Tottie Bryant, an aboriginal lady, discovered an amazing opal and the rush was on again. During the 1960s and 70s the opal industry grew into a multi-million dollar industry.
The surface today is an amazing maze of pocks and spoil of thousands of abandoned shafts. Dangerous territory to traverse. Mapping all this might tax even the most advanced GIS technology to the limit!
Water has always been a problem. First brought in by cart, and later stored in huge tanks, today a groundwater source to the north supplies the town. It is expensive though. $5 for 1000 liters. That is around 2 cents a gallon, and sounds very inexpensive but it isn’t. I wonder, at those rates, if they have a local car wash!
Homes today are a far cry from those early dugouts. They are modern in every way but the majority of them are still underground. Natural stone walls and ceilings can contrast with contemporary furnishings and appliances.
Even an Underground Motel can be found! “A perfect stopover” on the Stuart Highway to and from the Northern Territory their website says. Complete with ‘covered’ parking.
So, we may envision a town that could be easily driven across and never seen but such is not the case. There are many structures above the ground too -- including some houses. There is no chance of missing Coober Pedy!
If I ever get the chance to visit, I’m going to check in to that underground motel, park my Holden in the covered parking garage, get something cool to drink, and then fossick and noodle some mullock.
GeoT is a long-time high school geography teacher from Illinois. In addition to geography, he enjoys railroads and model railroads, old Oldsmobiles, and gardening.
