Welcome to Coober Pedy -- After arriving here late yesterday and checking into our hotel (which is basically a cave), today we did a couple of tourist things which is what you do when being a tourist!
Photo below is the reception of our hotel.
This one is the dining room which is about 20 metres underground.
Night time view of the front entrance to the hotel.
The view across the road is the neighbour's front yard. Apparently when you have finished with cars, trucks, machinery etc you just park it in your yard and forget about it.
Across the road from the hotel (above the messy front yard above) is a lookout, and below are some shots of the town centre and the outer suburbs!
Below shots are taken at what is allegedly a working mine on the edge of town - it's called Tom's Working Opal Mine although there didn't really appear to be much work going on.
Tunnel above was first bored as a round tunnel and then the bottom was bored out with a square tunnelling machine which is picture below. Slightly smaller version of the ones used to dig the Brisbane tunnels!
Below is another example of the modern high tech gear used around the opal mines here.
Wanna buy a rock? $30k and it's all yours!
Below is how opal miners descend into the shafts they have drilled and dug...health & safety doesn't appear to have yet reached Coober Pedy ..I have seen a couple of hi-viz shirts but that was it...the standard footwear appears to be thongs!
A few shots below of a typical miners underground home which are called dugouts. When you need to extend and add a room you apparently just dig it out and hope you don't break into the neighbour's house!
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