At home Downunder

Many residents live very nicely underground. Picture / South Australian Tourism

And on Sunday afternoon after lunch," the tour guide explains in the sort of tone that indicates she thinks we're all non-English speakers, small children or mentally ill, "the whole family - the dad, the mum and the kids - will all sit around making bombs."

Did she say bombs? Now, before the police send in the SWAT team, it should be pointed out that this is, apparently, entirely normal practice in Coober Pedy.

Round these parts, in South Australia's deepest outback, people don't buy houses. They don't even build their own houses.

They simply buy the land, put together crude explosive devices from ingredients found in the local supermarket and blast away so much rock that eventually a cave is created.

All you have to do is arrive on a sizzling day, and it begins to make perfect sense.

At 6.30am today, it is already 30C outside. Three hours later, and it is creeping towards 45C. There's no wind, no shade, no relief, and this is a fairly standard summer's day. It's hellish out there, which is why we, like most of Coober Pedy, are safely underground, cooling down.

Roughly 70 per cent of the town's population live in these underground grottoes, and most created their own place from nothing. It's DIY taken to a whole new level.

It goes without saying that it takes a peculiar type of person to live here; the sort of person who is rough and ready, salivates at the prospect of ludicrous adversity and can do what needs to be done with the minimum of fuss. Oh yes, and more specifically, has a desire to mine opals.

Coober Pedy wouldn't be here without the bounty found in the desert around it. It is routinely called the world's opal capital for very good reason.

This is not the sort of place in which to bring up your children, tend a patch of land or live the serene, quiet life. It's an unequivocally bleak part of the world, miles from civilisation, and without luscious landscape to make up for the isolation.

The shiny rocks have called out though, and should those already here decide this is not the life for them, there is a queue waiting to replace them.

The tour leader is reeling things off incredibly matter-of-factly. The bathroom and kitchen go in first, right by the entrance, to make things easier for the plumbing. If the pipes are at the front they won't have to be continually re-laid when blasting out extensions in the rear.

The size and height of the rooms seem totally random, but there is a logic to this too. The dimensions are determined by whether any opal seams are found. I'm left reeling at the fact that the underground showhome has a heck of a lot of mod cons for something that looks like the set of the Flintstones. It's almost palatial.

More incredible still is that this family home is directly above a working opal mine.

While this may make for a really short commute, surely no one can feel entirely safe knowing that, underneath the foundations, there are explosions going off all day? Apparently, it is structurally fine, but still rather you than me.

Through a doorway from the master bedroom, we are taken down into the tourist part of the mine, and shown where the money is.

The shimmering, almost plastic-looking streak in the rock wall is a seam of opal, although before any of us get any ideas about going at it with a pick-axes, were quickly put in our place. This is only a small bit, left in for illustration purposes, and it really isn't worth much.

We're taken past the shafts (complete with dummies pretending to climb up ladders) until we reach a little alcove full of small, dusty sacks and we are given a crash course in small-scale terrorism. In these sacks are the ingredients to make the bombs that, along with some heavy industrial mining equipment, make the tunnels.

All of it is readily available in any urban hardware store, or in Coober Pedy's case, the corner shop. Fits neatly next to the pint of milk and the loaf of bread.

It's quite fitting that all this madness started by accident. A group of Adelaide gold prospectors were investigating the area in 1915, hoping to make a fortune by kicking off a new gold rush. However, they were trying to do so in the middle of a fierce drought, and had to look for water.

Fourteen-year-old Willie Hutchison was told to stay behind and look after the camp, but he disobeyed orders and went off searching too. He not only found a fortnight's supply of water, but came back with an opal.

Today, thousands try to duplicate Hutchison's luck. Just off Coober Pedy's main street (which is named after the fortunate teenager) are huge piles of rubble, cast-offs from the mining operation.

Tourists are encouraged to try their luck and have, apparently, found decent-sized opals.

At the risk of sounding like a bitter old cynic, there don't appear to be many windfalls here, though. Plenty of people making idiots of themselves by scrabbling around in the dirt for hours, sure, but no sign of opal.

That doesn't stop one excitable chap taking a bit of plastic back to the shop in a triumph of hope over pragmatism. After all, being out in this heat can do funny things to the mind.

GETTING THERE

Coober Pedy is 846km north of Adelaide along the Stuart Highway. It can be reached in a day, but breaking the trip with an overnight stop in the Flinders Ranges is advisable. A return flight to Adelaide, via Sydney or Melbourne, with Air New Zealand should cost about $1000.

MINE TOUR

A tour of the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum (www.umoonaopalmine.com.auor 08 8672 5288) costs A$6 ($7.34) for adults, A$3 for children. If that sounds too cheap, don't worry - you'll be encouraged to buy as many opals as you can carry away with you at the end of the jaunt.

WHERE TO STAY

Accommodation at the Desert Cave International Hotel (www.desertcave.com.au or 1800 088 521) will set you back from A$192 a night, if you fancy the underground experience.