How People Live Underground in the Hottest Town on Earth

Описание: Coober Pedy, in the Australian outback, is so hot that in summer the surface regularly passes forty degrees, with a record over forty-eight — no trees, no shade, almost no water. So the people did something extraordinary: instead of fighting the heat, they moved underground. Most of the town now lives in homes carved straight into the rock, called dugouts, where the temperature stays a cool and constant twenty-three degrees all year round, with no air conditioning at all.

And it is not just houses. Down in the rock there are shops, a bar, hotels, even churches, all hewn out of the stone — you could live an entire life down there without stepping into the sun. The reason anyone came to this furnace in the first place is buried in the same rock: opal. And that leads to the strangest part of all, where the line between a home and a mine simply disappears.

This is how you survive a place too hot to live on — by slipping quietly underneath it.

#cooberpedy #underground #opal