I  sensed that this was going to be a travel experience with a difference when the                                                   passenger in the front seat of our tiny plane leaned forward and pulled the life                                                                 belt whistle from behind the pilot’s neck as he fumbled to find it during the                                                                delivery of his mandatory safety instructions prior to take-off.  

Our 18-seat aircraft was wide enough for one seat on each side of a narrow                                                                  aisle with a ceiling high enough to accommodate a 5 foot tall adult. Boarding                                                                 with my small cardboard cup of water and two cookies courtesy of the                                                                        airline - sufficient to keep us hydrated and food satisfied for the 3 hour trip to                                                         Australia's Outback - I had to imitate a hunched hobble with my head tucked                                                                   onto my chest to reach my sheepskin covered seat towards the back of the plane.

We were headed 846 kilometres north of Adelaide to Coober Pedy, a town much                                                            like you would expect to find in the old American Wild West or at the forefront of                                                               a Gold Rush. Coober Pedy’s treasure is not gold but an equally beautiful precious gem; the opal. Arriving at Coober Pedy we put down on a landscape that was much like that of the moon.

In a land immense, ancient, hotter than one can imagine and dry beyond belief, where sometimes the soil does not experience the relief of even a single raindrop for years, a certain breed of                                                                                  person has settled and thrived. They are the opal miners and their                                                                                 habitat must surely be the place most mysterious, most utterly                                                                                       fascinating in all of Australia.

150 million years ago the area where Coober Pedy now stands was                                                                                  a turbulent ocean. With climatic change the ocean disappeared and                                                                                the silica left behind and dissolved in water seeped into cracks and                                                                              crevices in the rock. Decaying organic matter left casts and                                                                                  sometimes that was also filled by silica. As the water evaporated,                                                                                        opal precipitated as a solid that was composed of tiny spheres, arranged where fortunate with some regularity and continuity                                                of size. In precious opal the spheres are regular and light is diffracted and scattered in such a                                                way as to cause that wonderful harlequin of color that opal connoisseurs have come to admire.                                              Larger spheres diffract the longer wavelengths                                                                                                                  and create a red and orange play of color.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Smaller spheres give rise to a blue effect. The greatest value in opal arises                                                                    where both blue  and  red are in close proximity in a stone and that's what the                                                                   miners are here to find.

Small dusty Coober Pedy is a thriving center  of industry - smack center in the                                                                    middle of nowhere. As we drove into town with the hotel tour guide who also                                                              served as the airport agent – checking in the luggage and such – we passed small Utes (trucks) scurrying about the town like ants on a mission. Each sported an over-size sign reading EXPLOSIVES. An expensive and vital part of the industry, they sell the means to speed up a once tedious operation where progress was slow and tunnels were excavated with pick and shovel. Now most of the town resides underground and in the digging of a new room for their house a miner often more than covers the cost of furnishing with their opal takings.

In a small shop on the main street in Coober Pedy I struck up a conversation with a miner who had arrived in Coober Pedy from Greece at the age of 16. Yannis Pappadoupolis owns a shop selling opals to tourists but swears that money is not important to him. His love he says is the opal. On sale for A$67,000 in his shop was the biggest opal I’d ever seen. Laying it on a piece of red velvet, the 120 carat gem  glittered like something born of the moon. It was absolutely stunning.        Opalescent with fire shooting from its heart in every colour of the rainbow,  it nestled in a circle of diamonds. “And what is the value of the smaller red  opal you call “Desert Fire” I asked. “Priceless,” he said. “I’ll never sell it.”

 

In a town of 3500 inhabitants comprising 45 different nationalities, Coober Pedy's                                                      citizens are a diverse and often amusing array of characters. One of note is a                                                                local legend, "Crocodile Harry", who claims to be a Latvian Baron. During his                                                               youth in Northern Queensland, he was a handsome crocodile hunting                                                                   Casanova. when the market for crocodile skins dried up Crocodile Harry                                                                    migrated to Coober Pedy, where he opened a "B&B" in a dugout. His specialty -                                                      entertaining ladies from foreign lands for a fee. In keeping with his image his                                                             dugout decor is erotic - nude figures and lacy underwear. You might recognize                                                          Harry's dug-out from a Mad Max movie (Beyond the Thunder Dome).

At night we discovered that the bars are crowded with men who may spend the                                                            better part of their lives searching the underworld for glittering streaks of opalized                                                                 silica in their diggings. Most are small-time operators who have a claim, work in                                                             the morning or maybe the afternoon, make the occasional find and lament that the                                                         rich pickings in opal mining are a thing of the past. “What can they expect,” was                                                            the cynical comment of one Coober Pedy matron with whom I spoke. “They only                                                              work a few hours a day!” She might have had a point, I see several miners exhausted from the morning's work going who knows where, bare bellied (usually substantially so) with a wheelbarrow toting a case or 2 of beer. Maybe they are off to view                                                                  a movie, several were filmed in Coober Pedy for its arid other-worldly                                                                                  landscape.  Something that looks like it just skimmed the desert sands in crash                                                                      landing comes from the hit blockbuster Pitch Black. It's without a doubt a                                                                              spaceship. Vin Diesel’s character, Riddick, was introduced to millions of sci-fi fans                                                                  in the movie; yes indeed it's hallowed ground for film buffs (and ladies looking f                                                                  or a Latvian Baron).

                                                                 Coober Pedy's opal fields are spread over an area of approximately 40 kilometers around the town and it is here in Australia that most of the world’s supply of opals are to be found. Conventional mining with pick and shovel (more recently jackhammer)  takes place in the 70 opal fields that spread out around the town. deep shafts, both operative and abandoned litter the landscape. "Noodlers comb                                                                 the tailings for missed treasures. Despite warnings photographers have walked                                                            backwards into shafts as they search for the perfect shot. Recently a french                                                                  journalist  stumbled into a 10 meter long shaft and bumped down its length to                                                                   land in a pile of sand. The lady's full figure slowed her descent and the soft sand                                                           cushioned her landing.

 

For those with a strong work ethic there's still money to be made in this Topsy-turfy world of the Australian outback,but be wary not to offend. Dynamite and the Ozzie sense of settling scores combine in Coober Pedy to form a strange blasted landscape from which the tourist could be left singed and puzzling.

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Just so you have a taste of the local dialect before you visit (High Ozzie)... (this from Reddit - 50andMarried)

 

"Sitting at home last Sunday morning, me mate Boomer rang Said he was having a few people around for a barbie, said he might cook a burro or two I said, "Sounds great, will Walla be there?" He said, "Yeah and Vejja might come too" So I said to the wife, "Do you wanna go, Anna?" She said, "I'll go if Ding goes" So I said, "What'll we do about Nulla?" He said, "Nulla bores me to tears, leave him at home" We got to the party about two and walked straight out the kitchen to put some booze in the fridge And you wouldn't believe it, there's Boomer's wife Warra sitting there trying to plait a puss! Now, I don't like to speak ill of Warra, but I was shocked; I mean how much can a koala bear? So I grabbed a beer, flashed me wanger at her and went out and joined the party".