Skip to main content

Dugouts


To me Coober Pedy is a cross between the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland and a strange town in the desert like Las Vegas, not quite real.

Does this look like a thriving town with 3500 residents?  The odd landscape is because many of the people live underground in dugouts to escape the fierce summer heat.  Pipes sticking out of the ground indicate there is a surprisingly normal home below.   We even visited an underground church.


The main street comprises tacky Opal sales outlets and basic necessities like supermarkets, a bank and petrol stations. On the edge of the town they have a golf course that doesn’t have a single blade of grass, just stones with the greens marked with sump oil.







Comments

  1. JulieOctober 22, 2010 at 9:38 AM

    The tackiness is a bit overwhelming. I went into the underground church and had a tour of an underground house. Yes, surprisingly normal, althoug gave me the heebie-jeebies. Nice place to visit ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joan ElizabethOctober 22, 2010 at 7:39 PM

    I quite liked the dugouts and I hate the heat so if I lived there I reckon I would go underground and not pop up again until winter. And yes it is over the top tacky and a great place to visit but I would not choose to live there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 22, 2010 at 9:45 PM

    I like how you divided the top photo in two. The colour of the soil is amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. diane bOctober 23, 2010 at 12:36 AM

    That's flat! You would think people who were resourceful enough to build nice homes underground would have more taste in selling their wares.

    ReplyDelete
  5. freefallingOctober 23, 2010 at 11:14 AM

    I reckon it would be AWESOME to live in a cave!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Listening to the stars

In the morning we went out to see the radio telescope 20 or so kms out of town.  On another wayfaring trip  we visited the radio telescope at Parkes  but this one is an array of dishes on a long track that can act like one big dish. 
3 comments
Read more

Royal Hotel - Ganman

And I wrap up this trip with the Royal Hotel at Ganman.
2 comments
Read more

Larras Lee

We passed through Bakers Swamp without noticing anything.  Then reached our last dot on the map for this trip - Larras Lee and saw this.  The roadside monument says: In Memory of  WILLIAM LEE  (1794 - 1870)  of "Larras Lake"  a pioneer of the sheep  and cattle industry  and first member for  Roxburgh under responsible  government (1856 - 1859).  This stone was erected  by his descendants.  --- 1938 --- This is a repost from a few days ago. Thinking I would use this for this week’s Taphophile Tragics post I dug a little further into William Lee’s story, it’s a very colonial Australian one. William was born of convict parents, living his childhood years around the Sydney region. In his early 20s he was issued with some government cattle, recommended as a suitable settler and granted 134 acres at Kelso near Bathurst. He was one of the first in the area and did well. A few years later he was granted a ram and an inc...
9 comments
Read more