[Rockhounds] Coober Pedy: The mining town where people live under the earth

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

*After spending a night* in an underground rock cave in the middle of the
Australian desert, I learned three things: The silence is deafening. Your
eyes never adjust to the darkness. And if nobody brushes the ceiling before
you arrive, that clump of dirt is going to scare the living hell out of you
when it drops on your face at 2 a.m.

I've flown 1,200 miles for the privilege of sleeping in a hole in Coober
Pedy. There's no Wi-Fi down here. The glare of my MacBook feels obnoxious
in the subterranean stillness. The TV plays ads for a "local" cleaning
service from the next town over, but that just happens to be 400 miles away.

Australia is a country defined by "the tyranny of distance," but traveling
to the underground opal mining town of Coober Pedy feels like taking a
holiday on Mars.

https://www.cnet.com/features/coober-pedy-the-mining-town-where-people-live-under-the-earth/