A visit to Whitefella’s Hole

On our way to Coober Pedy on both sides of the road small conical hillocks peppered the landscape like giant anthills. They are spoils from miners’ digs and look an awful lot like the cones we saw at the Breakaways. Walking around at night out here is very dangerous because of the mining activity and in fact is illegal. The holes are not filled when the mining is finished. Fall down one of those and nobody would even know.

Coober Pedy was founded in 1915 after opal was first discovered, and life here has always been shaped by the desert. With summer temperatures climbing well over 40°C, many residents dug their homes into the hillsides, creating the underground houses, churches, shops and even hotels that keep a steady, comfortable temperature year-round. Coober Pedy has drawn people from more than forty countries — soldiers, Aboriginal families, fortune seekers and migrants — all hoping to make a living from the mines. The result is a tough, multicultural community where survival depends as much on adaptability as on luck.

The name of the town (decided in 1920) is thought to derive from the words in the Aboriginal Kokatha language, kupa piti, usually translated as “whitefella” and “hole in the ground”, or guba bidi, “white man’s holes”, relating to white people’s mining activities.

We stopped for lunch in a dugout, a lovely shared Greek spread with dips and pita bread, Greek salad, lamb and chicken, and roasted vegetables. With wine and beer, of course.

After lunch we were taken to see how opal was mined. It’s very much a small time business with strict rules about claiming an area. The culture here is very much recycle and reuse. Old trucks are commonly used as engines to bring spoil up from below ground.

Here’s some information about how opal is formed.

A young local lady told us about the underground lifestyle, showing us what the dugouts looked like in the 1920s as compared to the spacious rooms developed now.

Mining for opal is like panning for gold (or writing a book) – it’s very hit and miss. A tiny percentage strike it lucky and make a motzer. Some find enough to make a living. Many mine part time.

Coober Pedy is fascinating and deserved more time. Your Guide to Coober Pedy is an interesting article about the town and the area which will tell you a little more.

We returned to the train for drinks and dinner and saw a quite spectacular sunset with the dying rays of the sun glinting on the rails. It was our last night on the train. Tomorrow we’d be pulling in at Adelaide.

By the way, if you’ve happened across this post by accident, see the whole trip here.