CAMPSITE # 87 - The Opal Capital of the World

When someone told me I was about to visit a town where most of its people live underground, I don’t think I really took a moment to even consider what it would have been like.

Coober Pedy truly is a town like no other. It’s a highly populated town where you are guaranteed to be paying top dollar for everyday goods – 600ml of milk was $4.40, diesel was 30c more expensive than the price 300km down the road and water was extremely difficult to come by. But considering how remote Coober Pedy is from civilisation, you can only expect to pay a premium price for everyday goods. So, what drags thousands of people to live underground in the stinking heat, damn smack in the middle of nowhere? Opals.

Coober Pedy’s claim to fame is that it is internationally recognised as the Opal Capital of the World.

Generally, once an area has been mined for opals, it’s left with man-made caves and underground shafts which the townspeople then convert into their homes. Considering the temperature often exceeds 50degrees during summer, their homes are a stabilised and a cool temp of 21 – 25 degrees celsius.

Driving into the town, you’re met by an incredible number of ‘mullock piles’ as far as the eye can see. They just look like giant sandy ant hills... and they’re EVERYWHERE!! To mine for opals, they drill a hole usually between 12 – 30 feet deep and then suck the rubble up to the surface via a large tube which is connected to a custom built vacuum-cleaner-like device hoisted on the back of a truck called “A Blower”, then leaving the extracted dirt on the ground called “mullock piles”. As opals aren’t magnetic or dense or light enough to use any settling techniques to extract the gems, the only way to retrieve the opals is by manually sifting through the rubble. Because of this process, a lot of valuable opals can often be missed and left lying amongst the rubble.

Just outside of town, there are, what they call, “Public Noodling Areas”. These are pretty well left over rubble for the public to ‘noodle’ through in search of their very own opals. We had a little go and to no great surprise, to no success.

We then went on a self guided tour through an open and working opal mine and educated ourselves further on the retrieval process. 

The Geologists' Lunge

 How to make a bomb...

At the end of quite a bizarre day in quite a bizarre town, we set about finding camp for the night. While there were free camps available just on the outskirts of town, we weren't given many reasons to feel very safe camped up beside the highway.

The town centre is actually quite eerie. If all of the sudden all opals just disappeared off the face of the earth, this rather disjointed town would no doubt fall to pieces in a matter of weeks. Sadly, there’s a large number of aboriginal people homeless and roaming the streets throughout the day, gathering at the shadiest place in town. It was our first snippet into what I assume it will be like, more magnified, throughout parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It seems that “The White People” turn a blind eye as if their fellow Australians simply don’t exist. The Aborigines seemed to only interact with each other, giving this town a very segregated and somewhat hostile feeling to it. 

We made a choice, no doubt similar to many other travellers visiting Coober Pedy – to find the most secure caravan park in town and lock ourselves away in our own little bubble, away from the uneasiness in the town centre.

Site : Sturt Range Caravan Park
Rating : 6 / 20
Facilities : Nothing flash but at $20 for a powered site, it was certainly very reasonably priced. Showers were 20c for 3 minutes and you can expect to pay 20c for 40litres of water should you wish to top up your tanks.

 I figured Tom The Geologist must have been quite disappointed at the idea of searching high & low (literally) for a particular rock and being unsuccessful. He just sat at our camping site with his head in his hands staring at the floor. While I was busy pitying him, he was busy sifting through the gravel on the ground. After just 20 minutes and a very sore back, Tom had found himself a large handful of opalised rock amongst the gravel driveway. When they first laid the gravel on the driveway, one guess where they got their free gravel from, why the public noodling piles of course!! 

N.B. it is extremely difficult to take a photo of an opal sparkling in the sunshine

It was incredible! He then got out his little “I’m a Geologist” kit and started working on the little fellas, turning them into very well shaped pendant sized opals. Some of which are extremely colourful and beautiful to look at. We didn’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for opals without any sentimental value. Nope, all we needed was a Geologist with a keen eye to the floor.

The next day, we patrolled the local service stations in search of the cheapest fuel in town. $1.61 per litre (it’s quickly climbing!!). While refuelling, we had a little over-the-bowzer chat with a local tour bus driver. As he began to list off all of the “you have to see’s” one in particular stood out – “Crocodile Harry’s”. Apparently, Crocodile Harry used to catch crocs with just himself, his dog, a tinnie and a handcrafted wooden spear. ‘He was wrestling crocs that made Steve Irwin’s look like babies.’ Old Harry was quite the lady’s man too apparently the tour bus operator just couldn’t understand how he ‘had a different bird for everyday of the year”.

Sadly, Crocodile Harry died 4 years ago at the age of 82. His home had since been open for viewing. Harry's best mate and neighbour of over 30 years, Tim, inherited Harry's place. He tidied it up a little and opened it as a tribute to his mate.
I felt sorry for Tim because after listening to the stories he told us about the BBQ that lasted 30 years, I realised that he was still really hurting and grieving over the loss of his dear friend. And quite a character he was too!

Harry's home was extraordinary. Those 365 women had left their bras & panties hanging on the wall with a little love note left for it's owner. Tim told us that Harry's front door was never closed and he used to open his home to backpackers and travellers to come party, share stories and then paint his walls, leaving their own unique mark amongst thousands of others.


In years to come, when I think of Coober Pedy I'll always think of Crocodile Harry and the electric life he must have led, living his own very colourful life not bothered by the goings on in everyday life but rather paving his own route and living a life few would ever even dream of living.