Inside the unusual Australian town where locals live in underground homes to beat the heat
Australia is home to an unusual town with underground dwellings known as ‘dugouts’ that help locals beat the heat as temperatures can soar to over 40°C in the summer.
Coober Pedy is situated in South Australia, about 525 miles from Adelaide and is sometimes hailed as the ‘opal capital of the world’ due to abundance of the precious stones.
The town has an average temperature of around 30–32°C, but during the summer this can rise to a sweltering 48°C and it has some of the lowest levels of rainfall in the country, with just 38 rainy days per year on average.
The town’s hot desert climate means that buildings above ground need air conditioning to keep things comfortable but locals have also come up with an ingenious way of keeping cool that doesn’t require AC units - by building ‘dugouts’ into the hillsides.
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Around 2,000 call Coober Pedy home but it’s also become a popular tourist attraction due to its unique underground caves that not only included residential living spaces but also churches, bars and shops.
Residents and visitors can also make the most of an underground casino, hairdressers, and restaurants.
There’s even a hotel called the Desert Cave Hotel, which comes complete with bars, pool room, restaurant, and gift shop - all tucked away underground.
The dugouts need to be bored at least 13-feet down to prevent their roofs from collapsing in, but the deepest is a whopping 26ft below ground.
The homes come with all the modern conveniences you’d expect to find in a typical above ground property, including electricity, running water and an internet connection.
And, because they’re underground away from the blistering sunshine, they’re naturally a lot cooler with average temperatures between 19 and 25°C year-round.
Speaking to the Sun in July last year, German-born Sabrina Troisi said she moved out to Coober Pedy in 2013 with her family and hasn’t looked back.
She told the outlet her underground home cost £132,000, a lot less than Adelaide’s average property price of £382,000.
Troisi also found work at the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum.
“Walking into our house is just walking into a hill, basically,” she explained.
“It’s much cheaper to live underground than above ground. It’s cheaper because you don’t need to heat or cool the rooms, and you just need lights inside.
“There’s no outside noise. When you shut the door, everything disappears. It’s completely dark, completely quiet, perfect for sleeping.
"I love sleeping underground.”
As the weather remains dry and warm throughout the year, Troisi joked that it wasn’t really a requirement to check out the window before leaving the house.
“You can probably leave your umbrella at home,” she said.
Overground, Coober Pedy has a popular local golf-course, which is completely free of grass and requires players to carry around a small piece of turf to tee off from.
In a bid to escape the heat, most golf takes place at night with the use of glow-in-the-dark balls.
It’s also become a popular spot for filmmakers due to its photogenic scenery with movies including 1985’s Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, Vin Diesel's 2000 sci-fi horror Pitch Black, and Mortal Kombat all being filmed there.
Claire Reid
