Going Underground (Cooper Pedy)

Member Name: TigerMystery

Product:	Cooper Pedy
Date:	12/07/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Novelty factor

Disadvantages: Hard to get to, the journey is extremely boring.

Location: in the middle of nowhere (about halfway between Adelaide and Alice Springs). You either need to have your own transport, or visit as part of a bus tour. It took about 12 hours to get here from Adelaide, and then a further 12 hours to get to Alice Springs.

Accomodation: there are couple of different hostels and hotels to stay in. I won't list them here because you can probably find basic info about them via a search engine. However, I will mention the one I stayed in. It was called Umoona, and as with all the other buildings in this town, was underground. This was a little spooky, but also a great novelty. It was like living in hollowed out cave; people in Coober don't use central heating because living underground keeps their housing warm all year round.
The hostel itself was fairly basic, but that's what you'd expect from a hostel. I was on a group tour, so there were about 20 of us, and we all stayed in the same room, which was subdivided into smaller sections of 4 beds each. There was a kitchen to the side of our room. We were supplied with food by our guide, so you'd probably have to provide your own if you had arrived by yourself. There is a supermarket across the road from this hostel.

Things to do: I was only here for one night, but that's probably all you need. It's a small town and there is not a lot to do, but it's worth visiting for the novelty of sleeping underground/ going for a drink in an underground bar etc. The hostel I stayed at also had an opal mine, and we were given a tour, which was very interesting. We were also shown round an example of an underground house. What was most interesting was being able to see the difference between the parts that had been hollowed out by hand, and those that had been done by a machine. We were also shown a video about the history of opal mining in South Australia, and given a demonstration of how the opals are cut.

On a side note, I visited Coober Pedy as part of Groovy Grape's Boomerang Tour from Adelaide to Alice Springs (they also do the same tour in the opposite direction). I would highly recommend doing this tour as a way to visit Coober Pedy.

Summary: Definitely worth the visit!