Coober Pedy Underground Homes | Dugouts Explained | Gekko Safari

The first time I stepped into a Coober Pedy dugout in January, I walked out of a 43 degree afternoon into a room that felt like a nice spring day. That’s the whole point. A lot of the town’s residents, roughly half by most accounts, live in homes dug straight into the hillsides, because above ground the summer heat is hard going.

Underground, the temperature stays fairly steady all year, somewhere in the low-to-mid twenties, without much need for air-conditioning. The rock is soft enough to dig with relatively simple equipment, and the opal miners who started the town had the tools and the skills already. Many early dugouts were just mining tunnels that people moved into.

What a dugout is like

• Cool in summer and mild in winter, with no need for heavy climate control
• Very quiet, and very dark if the lights go out
• Ventilation shafts bring in fresh air, since there are no windows in the main rooms
• Several underground motels and B&Bs let visitors sleep in one

If you’ve got a spare night on the way to or from Lake Eyre, sleeping in a dugout is a genuinely memorable stop. Pack a torch anyway. You’ll want it at 3am.