COOBER PEDY – THE AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLER GUIDE

Where is it? 846km north of Adelaide, SA Some people will do anything to escape the heat. After opals were discovered here in 1915, the Coober Pedy community got innovative and built their town underground. Now you can stay in underground B&Bs, visit underground museums and have an underground beer here. The best time of the year to visit is between April and October, when the weather is mild and the nights are cold. You take your chances rocking up in summer, when it can reach 45ºC and dust storms can blow in from nowhere....

The Opal Capital of the World has a varying population from around 2000 to 4000, with 45 different nationalities. Far removed from the rest of mainstream Australia, the wealth brought in during the mining boom has allowed residents to build luxurious underground dwellings complete with swimming pools and entertainment rooms, and four out of five residents live underground. The stark landscape surrounding Coober Pedy, including the 40km or so in every direction that’s dotted with shafts and mullock heaps from opal workings, as well as the moonlike Breakaways and not-too-distant Stuart Ranges, has formed the backdrop for films like Mad...

Coober Pedy is the opal capital of the world and a strange travelling stop over. By John Borthwick Almost nowhere to somewhere even less pretentious. In this case, from Olympic Dam to Coober Pedy in the South Australian Outback. Is a coober sort of an Aussie goober asks an American who arcing his hand and forearm like a windscreen wiper, trying to discourage a fly. A single fly. Coober? Comes from the Arabana word, for an uninitiated bloke answers the digger (literally) ahead of him on the boarding queue. Pedy or means hole in the rock. In other words: white fellers...

The painted hills in the rugged Breakaways in SA is a recently discovered phenomenen in the SA outback. “We get people through here who’ve seen the Grand Canyon, who’ve been to Uluru and the Bungle Bungles, and they reckon this is better than the whole lot.” That’s the word from Wrightsair’s Trevor Wright, who conducts flying tours to SA’s newest – and by the sounds of it most spectacular – natural attraction: the Painted Hills. They’re part of a recently discovered 30km by 10km section of the extraordinary Breakaways country in SA’s far north, and take the form of brilliantly coloured...

Flying tour to Aboriginal art centres in the Outback Have you ever been to an art gallery (or, more often, a touristy gift shop), taken a look at the Aboriginal works on display there and wondered to yourself at the – how can we put this – at the authenticity of the pieces? One great way of knowing for sure that what you’re looking at is the real deal is to take an aerial Aboriginal Art Tour. Fly to incredibly remote outposts to watch works of extraordinary beauty and complexity being produced right before your very eyes. Trevor Wright from...

Peter Rowe has one of the world's biggest mail runs, and you are welcome along for the ride. “EVERY TRUE BLUE AUSSIE SHOULD DO THIS TO APPRECIATE HOW VAST OUR COUNTRY REALLY IS.” – Chris Smith Peter Rowe delivers the mail in outback SA with nary a dog in sight – a 620km round trip in all. And you’re welcome to come along for the ride. “The business people keep telling me to get a bigger bus,” says the sardonic Rowe, who commences his run twice weekly from Coober Pedy. “But I don’t want that. I want to share the...