Coober Pedy was literally founded after early settlers randomly found opals, and the rest is history: many people moved it like a gold rush, although opals are not that easy to find (mostly random) and in the end aren't worth that much compared to the time and energy people put into finding them. Sadly many people lost their life's time and savings looking for them, and very few ended up ahead.

On the flight to and from Coober Pedy, we got to see the very many holes that were dug out to look for opals. From the gound it almost looks like the ground got shot by many big bullets and then finished off by bombs :)

It's only looking closer in the places that you see more:

Going for landing, and found a nice little dragon on the taxiway:

After going to our hotel with rooms dug in the hill, which is how people live to stay cool in the otherwise hot sun:

the clay gets a varnish on top so that it doesn't fall on you

We went to see the hotel museum and nearby mining museum:

Australia had a big island sea with prehistoric sea creatures

wicked

Lots of displays on how mining is done:

Opals:

The museums also showed multiple rooms cut into the hills how people lived/live. As a bonus, when you dig to add one room to your house, you might just find opals at the same time:

You could also tour some caves:

you can see the tunnel boring machine

Many stores selling opals in all different ways:

Visiting the town had a few left over props from multiple movies that were shot there:

From Pitch Black with Vin Diesel (a good SciFi movie actually)

not a movie prop, but super cool to see a DS so far from home

They also have landscape that looks close enough to Mars for Mars movies to have been shot there:

They also have a kangaroo sanctuary where they raise little joeys adpoted from killed moms:

We had a morning tour that took us to a mining area:

most holes are left unattended and are easy to fall into

Nearby was breakaways, a former inland sea:

A few shots of breakaways from the sky:

Nearby was the dingo fence, it kept Jennifer safe from being eaten :)

Last part of our tour was a church built into the side of a hill, very interesting:

We then went on our own to see another mine, and house built into a hill:

More housing quarters:

A fair amount of aborigines live there:

nice art

Misc:

Coober Pedy is definitely a cool place to visit, and learning about a different kind of mining that isn't really practiced anywhere else.