Its boastful sign notwithstanding, Coober Pedy is definitely not a city.
846 ks north of Adelaide, Coober Pedy has fewer than 2,000 “permanent” residents, and the local housing market is decidedly “depressed”.
The town’s self-declared status as “opal capital of the world” is, however, defensible.
Reportedly, its name derives from kupa piti – a phrase coined by the local Aboriginal people whose ancestors arrived in South Australia’s outback more than a few thousand years before kupa piti described any of it.
Kupa piti translates as “whitefellas’ hole”.
Whether one likes or loathes Coober Pedy, any visitor would almost certainly agree that it is a singular town.
“Underground” is the keyword: it is where many residents live, and where most of them work; one can also be quietly confident that in Coober Pedy “underground” is a useful adjective/adverb in various other contexts.
This visitor’s heart was not warmed by Coober Pedy; I think that “greed” and “eyesore”are also keywords.
However, once you get beyond the “devastation zone” – where the landscape is dominated by opal-seeking whitefellas’ holes and mullock heaps – you can enjoy glorious natural places, nearby.
You can see one of them in this series’ next post.
This post’s photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 3.14 pm on 11 June 2023.
Footnote:
Tonight (9 July 2023) ABC TV screens Limbo; Ivan Sen’s latest is an excellent “film noir”, shot in and around Coober Pedy.
A superb cinematographer, Sen has taken full advantage of Coober Pedy’s “surreal” appearance; Limbo deserves to be seen in a cinema, but even on a home television, it will prove visually-arresting.
Limbo is also intelligently scripted – very clear-eyed about some of the less-admirable “realities” of “outback Australia” – and well-served by its actors, both white and indigenous.
I think (underline “think”) that Limbo will be available via ABC iview for the next several weeks.