Photos

Deep holes and dirt mountains surround the town of Coober Pedy an half of the 3500 residents of Australia's opal-mining capital live underground, in dugouts cut from sandstone hills.
The other half suffer the summer heat in cheap weatherboard and brick homes. The dugouts remain cool all year round, though sandstone crumbs have a habit of dropping onto kitchen benchtops.
Perhaps the town's most visited dugout is Harry Blumental's infamous, multiroomed cavern - its walls decorated with bras and panties and photos of Nordic female backpackers lifting their tops.
"Crocodile Harry" is infamous for sitting young women on his lap and pawing their chests. But he is old and trembling and his arms look too weak to grope anything much these days. The mining areas outside Coober Pedy are pocked by thousands of deep holes and dirt cones. Thin planks of wood or rubber tyres are the only protection against falling into the mouths of the holes.The average cost to dig an underground room is $40 per 30 centimetres. Coober Pedy today is still colourful, just not so reckless. Rainbow-flecked opal seems to be on sale everywhere on the dirt main road. Locals talk of spending their days in the mine fields and their weekends noodling (sifting through mullock heaps for pieces of opal missed by the miners).Others loiter inside the pub with bags of stones in their pockets, waiting to prey on tourists. The town is quiet at night,and here are no buildings or bridge lights to disrupt the view. In Coober Pedy, only the reckless and the brave might come out during the hot days. But only a fool would remain underground at night... unless he's afraid of the desert cold nights!
Rock are burned (normal color on this picture) from excessive heat, and most of the houses looks like this one in the city. I only cropped the picture a little bit to fit size for upload.