Romancing Australia's stone

The opal-mining centre Coober Pedy, in the Australian Outback, is a frontier town full of gamblers living on a dream, writes KATHY MARKS.

I am terrified of heights and mildly claustrophobic, so why am I clinging to a swaying ladder halfway down a 24m mine shaft with my mouth full of dust and my heart beating like a jackhammer?

There is a simple answer. I am suffering from a malady that afflicts many in Coober Pedy, a township crouching on the world's richest opal fields, in the South Australian desert. I have been here only 36 hours, but already I feel a little crazy. Opal is all around me, locked away under layers of rock beneath my feet. I can sense it, I can almost smell it. Now I want to see it in the raw.

Fifteen minutes later, I am crawling through a labyrinth of passages that culminate in a low chamber recently dynamited by Dave Marsh, a miner. Dave is flat on his back in the rubble, hacking away at a sandstone wall. He stops abruptly and hands me a chunk of rock in which his lamp picks out shimmering reds and greens. "Look at those bits of colour," he says. "That's opal."

We find only tiny pockets of the precious gemstone, but Dave will be back. Like the early miners, who placed their possessions in wheelbarrows and walked 240km across the Stony Desert to Coober Pedy, he is hooked. "Once you've had a decent find, it gets under your skin and you can't let go," he says. "I found $30,000 [$36,400] worth on my second day underground in 1976. You just need to be lucky. You just need to drill a hole in the right place."

As jobs go, it's a gamble, but this is a town of gamblers, half-drunk on the notion of striking it rich. Permits are cheap, and prospectors require only a good instinct and basic equipment.

"Everyone here is living on a dream," says Peter Rowe, a former miner. "Where else can you go to work broke and dig out a fortune in 20 minutes?"

For the sake of the dream, locals are prepared to endure harsh conditions that include dust storms, plagues of flies and midsummer temperatures of over 50C. To escape the searing heat, they have retreated underground, carving homes in a ridge of hills overlooking the town. Subterranean living has become the norm in Coober Pedy; there are shops, hotels, churches and restaurants underground.

This offers some relief, but the brutal environment combined with the lure of an easy dollar makes for a rough and rugged frontier town. Trucks displaying "Explosives" signs clatter around the streets, and a notice outside the drive-in cinema politely requests that patrons refrain from bringing in dynamite. Poker games turn into three-day sprees, and mining disputes are settled with fisticuffs in the pubs.

In the 90s, the police station and courthouse were bombed and a German tourist was murdered, her body hidden down one of the thousands of unmarked mine shafts that perforate the desert landscape. Two other disappearances of young women in the town, 852km north of Adelaide and 708km south of Alice Springs, remain unsolved.

But Coober Pedy has a warmth and raw charm that explain why people stay on long after their hopes of becoming millionaires have evaporated. Many residents claim that they stopped off only to buy petrol and never left. Some fell in love with the remarkable scenery: the colourful rocky outcrops of the Breakaways, used as the location for numerous films including The Red Planet and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and a singular moonscape bisected by the "Dog Fence", which keeps dingoes out of sheep-farming country.

Tourism is flourishing, and disillusioned miners have opened opal shops, cafes and underground motels. But the opal industry continues to thrive, and to give the place its unique flavour. Approaching the town, you pass curious-looking vehicles such as blowers, a Coober Pedy invention: giant vacuum cleaners that suck out earth from below ground. The terrain is dotted with grey heaps of spent soil. There is an edge, something urgent, in the air.

The first opals were discovered by a 14-year-old boy, Willie Hutchinson, who was prospecting for gold with his father in 1915. Soldiers returning from the trenches of World War I flocked to the area and excavated the first underground dwellings. A settlement took shape, which Aborigines called Kupa Piti, meaning "White Man's Burrow".

Most miners arrived in the 60s and 70s, from around the globe. The population of 3500 comprises more than 40 nationalities; they live together in relative harmony in a town that produces 80 per cent of the world's opal, most of it bought on the fields by dealers from Hong Kong. Large companies play no part, with mining permits sold only to individuals or small groups.

Life is considerably easier now than in 1967, when Rowe arrived from Melbourne. "I lived in a tent on the opal fields, washed in a bucket, lived off kangaroos and rabbits," says Rowe, an affable 57-year-old. "There were 1000 men in the town and 30 or 40 women. It was a wild place. Those were exciting days. It was like the gold rush."

Like most locals, Rowe, who lives in a neighbourhood called Hopeful Hills, tells a story of narrowly missing out on a fortune. In 1972 he relinquished a mine to a family, who drilled 1.3m deeper and found an opal seam worth A$600,000 ($728,000). Broke and fed up, he gave up mining, and now runs a successful family pottery and tour business.

Coober Pedy has changed, too; the main road, formerly a creek bed with tree stumps growing out of it, was sealed in the late 80s, and the town acquired running water and street lighting around the same time. The infrastructure came so late because the authorities regarded Coober Pedy as temporary, and the town still has that feel about it. It looks like a ramshackle afterthought of a place, a collection of concrete and corrugated iron plonked down in the middle of the desert. There is not a speck of green in sight; instead of front lawns, homes have junkyards where rusting car bodies and mining equipment lie abandoned.

If Coober Pedy has a greater degree of civilisation than in the past, it is a thin veneer. Mining inspectors are no longer chased off the opal fields at gunpoint, but there are plenty of desperate characters around, none more reviled than the "night-shifters", who listen out for news of a big find and strip the mine bare in the dark.



Syd Smart, a retired chief mines inspector, loves to reminisce about the era of Machinegun Joe, who would wander around town randomly discharging his weapon, and Karl Bratz, whose gravestone consists of a beer keg inscribed with the words: "Have a drink on me".

Despite the dangers, opal mining retains its lure. Everyone mines at least part-time, including teachers and policemen. Lloyd Hetzel is a driver and maintenance worker, but his preoccupation is mining. "I've been here 15 years and I've never had a good find," he confesses. "It's quite embarrassing, considering all the hard work I've put in." On the next stool in the saloon bar is Keith "Moose" Gregson, a kangaroo hunter, fresh into town and looking for a mining partner. Like all newcomers, Gregson is entranced by the concept of living on top of so much wealth. The idea still seduces long-time residents too.

"You might as well keep trying your luck," says Marsh. "You never know what you're going to find tomorrow."

- INDEPENDENT

Case notes

Getting there: Kendell Airlines has four return flights between Adelaide and Coober Pedy each week, starting from A$210 one way. The flight takes two hours.

The drive from Adelaide to Coober Pedy along the Stuart Highway is a comfortable and interesting journey, taking eight to 10 hours.

Greyhound Pioneer runs a daily overnight service to Coober Pedy, departing Adelaide at 7pm and arriving at 5.30am. It costs about A$98 one way.

Tours: 4WD tours to Coober Pedy and the outback are available from Adelaide.

Things to do: Join the locals and head underground - some properties offer underground accommodation.

Tours to the Painted Desert and salt lakes are available from Coober Pedy.

Buy some opal, making the most of cheaper prices.

Enjoy a tour of the town, including its underground church and homes, opal shops and museums, opal fields, the Breakaways Range and the Dingo Fence.

Learn about the night sky with Martin's Star Gazing Tours.

Help to deliver the mail to remote outposts on the Coober Pedy to Oodnadatta Mail Run. It operates Monday and Thursday, departing at 9am and returning at 9pm.

Contact: Jane Wilson, South Australian Tourism Commission at jane@satc.co.nz or ph 09 914 9848.

Opal Capital of the World

South Australia Tourism Commission