The hunt for opals in Australia

An inconspicuous flat-roofed house with “GNK OPALS” emblazoned in huge red letters; a rainbow painted on its exterior wall: Welcome to Coober Pedy, the mining town in the southern Australian outback.

This small store sells iridescent gemstones, mainly to travellers who stop here on the highway from Adelaide to Darwin in the far north of the country.

For more than a century, the “opal capital of the world” with its population of just under 2,000 has been supplying the majority of the global demand for the iridescent mineral. Enormous deposits were left behind by an inland sea that covered central Australia millions of years ago.

When it dried up, it left an abundance of silica-rich sand. The mineral found its way into cracks in the earth, clay and sandstone gathered, and gemstones were formed.

“For a long time, there was an atmosphere of freedom here, far removed from the social mainstream”

In the 1970s, there was a gold rush atmosphere in Coober Pedy. Young men from all over the world, including Europe, were attracted by the hope of striking it rich digging for opals. However, few of them made a fortune.

Life in Coober Pedy remains hard today. To escape the merciless heat, many live underground, residing in subterranean dwellings or “dugouts”.

For a long time, there was an atmosphere of freedom here that attracted outsiders and adventurers, people who made their lives far from the mainstream bustle of urban life.

But for decades, the town, whose name goes back to the Aboriginal expression “kupa piti” ("white man's hole"), has had fewer and fewer inhabitants.

With garbage lying around and many wrecked cars, Coober Pedy can now look like a ghost town. Meanwhile, long years of mining have left deep scars on the landscape. Nowadays, if you go for a walk, you have to be careful not to fall down an old mine shaft.