We arrived in Coober Pedy early Sunday afternoon, and were a bit dismayed. The roads were uneven and badly paved - those that were paved at all. Half the roads in town were dirt. The main road had a myriad of signs advertising various businesses, but it was obvious that many had closed down years ago, and were covered with graffiti and signs of vandalism. Those that seemed to be still in business were also mostly closed. This may have just been because it was Sunday afternoon, and towards the tail end of the grey nomad season. Whatever the reason, it left us disillusioned and a bit deflated. We would find out tomorrow.

We settled into the caravan park, on a powered site. This was the first time we paid for accommodation on our trip so far. But we were happy to do it. We had heard stories about lack of safety here, confirmed by seeing several mobs of indigenous people loitering on various street corners, walking round with bottles in brown paper bags or slabs of VB, and addressing each other in very loud tones.

The following day we took a tour of the town and surrounding areas, and realised there was so much more to it than the dilapidated main street. Opals had been discovered here quite accidently in 1915, but the industry did not really pick up until much later, mostly because of the wars. Soon after the Second World War, there was a flood of immigration of unskilled workers from Italy and Greece. Many of these ended up working in factories in big cities, but often didn't like it. Coober Pedy gave them the prospect of striking it rich, despite the really hard work involved. In the 50s and 60s there was a wave of Italian and Greek influx, followed by the Serbians and Croatians in the 70s and 80s. At that time it was a vibrant cosmopolitan place, and the town had thousands of residents, mostly miners.

Now most of these people have got old, and their children were not interested in the lifestyle, and moved out. The population has dropped to about a thousand, mostly government workers, and there are less than a hundred miners left. It almost feels like a ghost town.

Although opal was found in the town area, and there are some mines there, they are no longer working mines as the government stopped mining in the town precinct in the 70s. Now all the mines are on fields around the town in a radius of about 50 or 60 kilometres , and are fascinating places to see. The area is covered with mulloch heaps, which is all the rocks dug up and spilled around the mine holes. People swear there are thousands of dollars' worth of opals which have been missed hiding away in these heaps. The process of sifting through the heaps is called noodling, and is the local pastime, but I have never heard of anyone who made it rich doing this. They have invented a machine that does noodling, which makes much more sense.

The town is actually much bigger than it looks, and that is because two thirds of the population live in dugouts. These are hobbit hole like dwellings carved into the hill sides, and are not immediately obvious until you know what to look for.

Why dugouts? Several reasons. The first miners had come after the Great War and had found no trees or other materials to build dwellings. Being 'diggers', used to digging and living in trenches, and also miners, digging into the hillsides made perfect sense. Then they discovered the added bonus of the temperature insulation, dugouts being a very pleasant 21 to 25 degrees all the time, through the scorching summer days and the icy desert nights. Also the type of rock in the area is easy to work with being soft enough to work but sturdy enough to not need a lot of supports.

We watched a dugout being dug out, for a new underground motel. And then spent a night in a dugout, in an existing underground motel. Very comfortable, and so dark you have no idea what time of day it is outside.

The tour also took us a bit further out of town. The opals have all been found in the Stuart Ranges, a series of low hills. On the other side of this range, the land just falls away in small cliffs called the Breakaways. Beyond these cliffs the land flattens out and is dead and stony - the Moon Plains. Many Hollywood blockbusters have been filmed here, including Mad Max.

Overall Coober Pedy is a fascinating town, but it looks faded and jaded. It has certainly seen better days. It is now starting to reinvent itself as a tourist town and that may save it. Although there is still a fortune of opals to be found, there are less and less people willing to put in the effort and investment to find them.

GeorgeY's bit

In a nut shell Coober Pedi suffers from bipolar disorder. On the one hand it is a town that thrived on great riches found, hushed up and dealing mostly in cash, with a cowboy attitude to protect claims with guns.

On the other hand the once great multicultural cosmopolitan society of the 70's is now failing and thinning, with the bitter taste that things are going from bad to worse, frustration with local authorities playing political/corrupt games.

Big projects to attract the high flyer tourist into posh accommodation are also there, but not as lively as it should be.

Typical of the bipolar symptoms, an opal trader will tell you how they are trapped in this vicious cycle and cannot afford to get out or retire in Adelaide, and in the same sentence they will tell you that this doctor from Sydney flies in every year, comes to the shop and places a bag of cash (ten grand or more) and picks opals, then goes home.

Overall Coober Pedy leaders lack vision, fairness and transparency. It worked a beauty in the 70's when all worked hard but were equal back then, but now some are becoming more equal than others. Australia is the scaled up model of bad leadership.