Australia Coober Pedy is a modern underground city. Australia has a city whose entire population lives underground.

The area around Coober Pedy is monotonous: red sandy hills stretching to the horizon. According to the impressions of the Chilean photographer Tamara Merino, once here, one might think that this is a ghost town. However, in fact, life is in full swing here, only not on the surface, but underground. There are underground bars and restaurants. Locals attend churches and raise children.

There is nothing special about the inhabitants of this modern dungeon: they are the most ordinary people who just live differently. Tamara Merino spent several weeks there. Thanks to her acquaintance with their way of life, T. Merino felt a close connection with the earth. These photographs are a continuation of her author's series "Underground".

Since 1915, people from all over the world have flocked to Coober Pedy to get rich or start a new life by mining opals. It was believed that these gems have magical powers. Many are really lucky. Rumors about the possibility of such enrichment quickly spread throughout the world. Many seekers of wonderful gems began to bring families here. Children began to be born in the underground city. Today people of more than 45 nationalities live here.

Jurgen Feldheim and Gabriel Guellen prepare dinner at their underground home in Coober Pedy.

In Guellen's house, where the photographer is staying, in the kitchen and dining room there are rough sandstone walls. The dwelling has wooden furniture and a stainless steel toaster.

The temperature on the surface of the earth here often reaches 40 ° C, and drops to negative levels. But the real scourge of the area is dust storms. For generations, locals have learned to protect themselves from uncomfortable weather conditions by building their homes tens of meters underground. And even the prayer house, decorated with sparkling stained-glass windows and biblical scenes carved on the walls, is located in the "underground".

Parishioners attend a Sunday service in an underground church built by the Serbian community.

Local miners work in narrow, dark mines with only flashlights. Sometimes, when they drill through the walls, the darkness is illuminated by dim beams reminiscent of the outside world. However, not everyone succeeds in finding expensive stones. Sometimes the whole life is spent in a vain search. There are those who, having become a millionaire, squandered their fortune by making the wrong investments or simply indulging in an idle luxurious life.

At present, the tradition of opal mining is gradually dying, and with it the city is declining. Teens and young people want more stable and safer jobs. However, many still continue to live underground, hoping to find the treasured rainbow-colored gem 30 meters underground.

Soil mounds left by opal drilling machines.

The door to the "dugout".

German miner Feldheim in his underground house.

Children in search of opal. Some already have huge collections.

One of the residents of Coober Pedy dreams of carving a luxurious dwelling in this underground space.

Goran Dakovic, a miner from the former Yugoslavia, searches for traces of opal in the wall.

The weather in Coober Pedy can be extremely unfavorable.

Noble opal is highly valued. Its cost can reach millions of dollars, depending on the type, color and weight.

Peter Broadbear searches for pieces of opal with a flashlight.

Feldheim is preparing to descend into the mine's vertical opal shaft, about 20 meters deep.

Aerial view of Coober Pedy mine fields.

Joe Rossetto runs an underground museum that houses his private collection of stones, fossils, opals and antiques found in the desert near Coober Pedy.

Guellen is waiting in the kitchen for her husband to return from the mine.

In the underground house there is an oil painting depicting embankments of soil from a drilling machine.

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 were used for ventilation. Whole settlements lived literally in the ground, only occasionally getting out to the surface.

So the movie city has a very real prototype. It is the mining town of Coober Pedy, located roughly in the center of South Australia. It lies on the Stewart Ridge, 300 kilometers from National park Lake Eyre. The outskirts of the city are a desolate and deserted landscape. There is a sparsely populated area for hundreds of kilometers. Before Adelaide (the most big city state and the fifth largest in Australia) you need to get 850 kilometers south on the Stewart Highway.

Coober Pedy on the map

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

All distances are indicated "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 o C, and by night the temperature can drop to 7 o C. Sharp 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. The conditions there are really unrealistically difficult. There, even tires on cars can crumble like chocolate, and the temperature in minus 40-50 is quite usual.

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

This is what an opal looks like

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

The miners have adapted to live in dugouts. The temperature there was almost always about 22 ° C. Often, miners went to work right from home, for this they dug tunnels directly into the mine. The workers dug entire houses underground, and they lived well in them. In addition to dwellings, there is a bar, a museum, churches, a gallery. artistic arts and even a hotel for tourists who want to experience what it is like to live underground.

The development of technology and technology 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. They have everything in their house for a comfortable stay - a kitchen, a living room, bedrooms and even bathrooms. Naturally there is electricity, running water and sewerage. They call such apartments "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 removes dust. Moreover, this design creates the illusion of primitiveness. You can take pigments and put them on the walls of mammoths, or in our case, kungaroo. 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 underground is betrayed only by the absence of windows. In the beginning, by tradition, two windows were made near the front door, but then the temperature balance in the room was disturbed. True, now this problem is solved by installing an air conditioner. Everything else is the same as in any modern home. Sometimes both styles are combined and you can get from the ultra-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 scenery for some famous films. In particular, scenes from the blockbusters "Mad Max. Under the Dome of Thunder "and" Black Hole "were filmed here. There is even an entire starship from the movie "Black Hole" preserved nearby.

the city hosts a number of festivals: the Coober Pedy Race, the Queen of the Desert and the Opal Festival. And all the residents 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 is 17000 carats or 3.45 kilograms familiar to us. The find was estimated at 2.5 million Australian dollars. This nugget was named the Olympic Australis Opal (originally 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 got to the water. The region cannot boast of abundant rainfall - they usually fall no more than 150 mm per year. Water comes through a 24 km long water pipe 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

Coober Pedy is a small town in the central part of the Australian state of South Australia.

The population is estimated for 2008 to be about 2 thousand people.

Uber Pedy is about 800 km away. from Adelaide, not far away Railway from Adelaide to Alice Springs. Immediate big cities- Port Augusta (500 km south) and Alice Springs (600 km north).

The city is famous for its opals, it is the capital of the opal stone, shining with all the colors of the rainbow.

The development of opals is a little less than 100 years old; their deposits were accidentally discovered while searching for water in 1915.

Noble opal is distinguished by an iridescent play of colors, the cause of which is the diffraction of light on a spatial grating and its value is determined not by its size, but by a unique play of color.

The more rays, the more expensive the opal. One of the aboriginal legends says that "a long time ago, the spirits stole all the colors from the rainbow and put them in a stone - opal", according to another - that

The Creator descended from heaven to earth and where his foot stepped, stones appeared, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow.

Opals are mined only by private entrepreneurs. However, this industry brings Australian economy about $ 30 million annually.

The city is known as the World Opal Capital, because it has one of the richest opal deposits, about 30% of the world's total reserves are concentrated here.

The name Coober Pedy is translated from the language of the Australian aborigines as "white man's hole" or "white man underground."

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Because of the harsh temperature regime and the predominant mining industry, people permanently reside in underground caves, in the shafts of mines left after mining.

Even the first settlers realized that due to unfavorable weather conditions, when the earth heats up in the sun during the day and on the surface the heat reaches 40 degrees Celsius, and at night the temperature drops sharply to 20 degrees (and sandstorms are also possible) - you can live underground in the shafts of mines after extraction of opals.

The constant temperature of underground houses is kept in the region of + 22-24 degrees at any time of the year. Today more than 45 nationalities live in the city, but the majority are Greeks. The population of the city is 1,695 people.

Water comes from drilled 25 km. from the city of an artesian well and relatively expensive. There is no common power system in Coober Pedy.

Electricity is generated by diesel generators and heating is provided by solar water heaters.

At night, when the heat subsides, residents play golf with balls glowing in the dark.

Previously, the development of opals was carried out manually - with picks, shovels, and the rock was pulled out with buckets until they found an opal vein, along which they then crawled like bellies.

Almost all the mines are shallow and the main passages in them are laid by boring machines that break through horizontal tunnels the height of a man's height and from it - branches in different directions. These are almost home-made devices - the engine and gearbox from a small truck.

Then the so-called "blower" is used - a machine with a powerful compressor installed on it, which, through a pipe lowered into the mine,

like a vacuum cleaner, it sucks the rock and boulders to the surface, and when the compressor is turned off, the barrel opens and a new mini-mound is obtained - a waste heap.

At the entrance to the city, there is a huge sign with a blower machine.

One of the sights of the city is the iron tree - the children of the first settlers asked the Pope for a tree, so he made a tree out of iron.

Even the first prospectors figured out that it was relatively convenient to settle down underground, in dwellings that cost almost nothing.

As for their successors, they and their families live in modern underground comforts.

Many of their houses are very large and simply luxurious ...

Some even have underground pools, while not far away, on the surface, the sun beats the earth mercilessly.

However, life in the opal mines is still tough, and many miners return over time with their families to an easier life elsewhere.

By the way, an article about the city underground and the people living in it, which appeared in Great Britain in 1927, prompted J.R.R. Tolkien to create in 1937, the second most popular literary work after the Bible, The Hobbit, and then, and Lord of the Rings "...

Coober Pedy is included in many hiking trails in Australia. People come here to see the underground churches and the cemetery.

The first trees that could be seen in the city were welded from pieces of iron. The town has local rolling grass golf courses and golfers line small pieces of turf around the first shot hole.

The landscape of Coober Pedy is very conducive to nature shooting. extraterrestrial civilizations... Films such as Mad Max 3: Under the Dome of Thunder, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Pitch Black were filmed here.

Coober Pedy hosts The Amazing Race for the second season.

In the area of Coober Pedy, approximately in 2012, they are going to conduct an experiment-exercise of an expedition to Mars ...

Local historians distinguish the world's largest livestock farm and the world's longest "Australian" fence from local attractions.

The standard home cave bedrooms with a hall, kitchen and bathroom are located in caves drilled inside the mountain, similar to houses on the surface.
This maintains a constant optimal temperature, while on the surface it reaches 40 ° C (maximum 55 ° C), at this temperature many household appliances become unusable. But the relative humidity rarely reaches 20% on hot days.

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Much of the interest in Coober Pedy is located inside the mines, cemetery and underground churches. The first trees that could be seen in the city were welded from pieces of iron.

The town has local rolling grass golf courses and golfers line small pieces of turf around for a first shot.

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Coober Pedy is included in many hiking trails in Australia. Against the backdrop of Coober Pedy, films such as Mad Max 3: Under the Dome of Thunder, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Black Hole were filmed. Approximately in 2012, they are going to conduct an experiment-exercises of an expedition to Mars.

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What do these celebrities have in common?

— Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones)

— Ricky Martin (Ricky Martin)

— Alanis Morissette (Alanis Morissette)

— Janet Jackson (Janet Jackson)

— Billy Joel (Billy Joel)

— Neil Diamond (Neil Diamond)

— Fleetwood Mack (Fleetwood Mac)

— Matchbox Twenty (Matchbox Twenty)

— Acey Deece (AC / DC)

Well, it is clear that they are all world-class musicians, fame, recognition, money, fans ... but we are not interested in this now.

They all visited Melbourne. It's already warmer ..

What you and I really need to know - all these stars (and many others), during their tour in Australia, chose and bought the famous Australian precious opals from the same absolutely fantastic person and my good friend (which I am immensely proud of) - Nicholas Le Souef.

Nick Le Souef against the background of himself at the age of 25. Photo taken in Coober Pedy - an underground city of prospectors and the capital of Australian opals

Believe me - THESE people could afford to buy opals in ANY other store in Melbourne or Sydney, but they all chose Nick.

Rolling Stones autographs and dedications - Ricky Martin - Alanis Morissette - Janet Jackson - Billy Joel - Neil Diamond - Fleetwood Mack Mac) - Matchbox Twenty - AC / DC and Nick's other celebrity buyers.

At 25, Nick already knew perfectly well how to find precious opals.

But the years take their toll, and when it was already physically difficult for Nick to mine opals, he opened a store and began to sell them.

It's another 20 years :))

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The underground art gallery is dedicated to Aboriginal art. It hosts exhibitions on the opal mining process. Visitors are given the opportunity to dig up their own gem.

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

CUBER PEDY, AUSTRALIA: Unique boulder opal found by miners in Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy is the capital of the Australian Opal Fever. © 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 there is a barren desert, the bottom of a dried up ancient inland sea. Coober Pedy is in the middle of it.

Center the map

Traffic

By bike

On the way

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 storehouse of the country is located.

CUBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: The picturesque hills of Brayways at sunset. The bowels of the earth beneath these hills hide enormous wealth. © Dmitry Chulov.

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

It is located 10 hours north of Adelaide. Seekers of happiness and adventurers from all over the world come here, in this dusty city scorched by the sun. After all, Coober Pedy is the capital of Australia's never-ending "opal fever".

CUBER PEDI, AUSTRALIA: A prospector's car installed in the desert at the entrance to Australia's opal rush capital. © Dmitry Chulov.

Around Coober Pedy, like in a minefield, there are signs. " Do not approach the mines!"- read the strict warnings. The opal mine area stretches for tens of kilometers around. During the years of fever, about one and a half million mines! The local people themselves call the local landscape “ lunar valley».

It was a childhood dream to come to Australia. Two years after arriving at " Green continent " Gennady Karpenko ended up in scorched desert... He is a carver: he searches for opals and processes them in his workshop.

95% of all opals in the world are mined in Australia. This stone is familiar local residents from time immemorial. True, the Australian aborigines have always bypassed opals - they believe that a spirit with the head of a man and the body of a snake dwells 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."

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

There is a battery on his belt, a flashlight on his forehead, and an ultraviolet lamp in his hands - the standard outfit of a local miner. Gennady agreed to show us the places where until recently he 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, the opal carver: “A 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 in one day can turn into a millionaire ...

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, the opal carver: "I found a few opals in the rock right there, above, a little - here ..."

His favorite sound in the mine is the crunch of breaking glass. With this, opals are taken out of the breed. After all, opal, in fact, is glass sintered by nature, due to the presence of various elements and inclusions, playing 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, the opal carver: “Sometimes when people blow up 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 ... "

From this one of the niches, having laid explosives, his neighbors-miners recently took out opals for ... 380 thousand dollars!

Gennady, the opal carver: “We here no one asks anyone how much you found, how you sold - this is not accepted in Coober Pedy. A lot of cash is spinning in this business! "

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

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

Dust, wind and an excavator devouring tens of liters of diesel fuel a day. Many opal seekers having arrived for a little while held in Coober Pedy all life. You just need to stake out a plot - everyone can do it. Father and son Rade and Roger mine opals in an open pit. Since 12 years old (!) Son has been masterfully handling an excavator bucket. His father, who came here in search of happiness in the distant 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, opal seeker:“I have found black, pink, green, crystalline - all kinds of opals. True, I was not as lucky as other prospectors. It was enough for me to pay the bills and for life. I am probably the biggest loser of all the old people who work at Coober Pedy! "

CUBER Pedy, AUSTRALIA: The famous opal boulder found in Coober Pedy. Bolder 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 Rada and Roger is huge " boulder”- the opal that they keep at home. There is no second such thing in the world! They are in no hurry to sell it and show it only on special occasions.

There are several dozen shops selling opals in small Coober Pedy. The most valuable of them are considered pink and black. Depending on the size and quality, the price of processed opals can go up to tens of thousands of dollars!

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

Dyubitsa, salesperson: “This stone is crystalline opal, large in size, transparent and pure. 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 burns devilishly in the light, its shimmer enchants. But during processing, opal loses up to 2/3 of its volume, or it may crack completely, losing its value. Opal is as fragile as glass. It is enough to drop it, and the holographic beauty can shatter into thousands of fragments. Therefore, only experienced craftsmen can work with opal.

Gennady, the opal carver: "If the stone is very expensive, sometimes it is up to $ 1,000 per carat, it is very difficult to cut it ..."

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

Gennady, the opal carver:“Opal processing 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 starts to play in your hands! "

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

You can watch the video version of this article in the form of a reportage about Coober Pedy, shot by me for the program "Their Mores" (NTV), here:

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

Coober Pedy is a small town in the central part of the Australian state of South Australia. The population is estimated for 2008 to be about 2 thousand people.

The city is known as the World Opal Capital, because it has one of the richest opal deposits, about 30% of the world's total reserves are concentrated here. The name Coober Pedy is translated from the language of the Australian aborigines as "white man's hole" or "white man underground."

Due to the harsh temperature regime and the prevailing mining industry, people constantly live in underground caves, in the shafts of mines left after mining. The standard home cave bedrooms with a hall, kitchen and bathroom are located in caves drilled inside the mountain, similar to houses on the surface. This maintains a constant optimal temperature, while on the surface it reaches 40 ° C (maximum 55 ° C), at this temperature many household appliances become unusable. But the relative humidity rarely reaches 20% on hot days.

Much of the interest in Coober Pedy is located inside the mines, cemetery and underground churches. The first trees that could be seen in the city were welded from pieces of iron. The town has local rolling grass golf courses and golfers line small pieces of turf around for a first shot.