Things to do in Coober Pedy

What are the best things to do in Coober Pedy?

Tour an opal mine, see a dugout home and an underground church, look over town from the Big Winch, and go noodling for opal. At night, play golf with glowing balls or catch a Saturday film at the drive-in.

Most sights sit within a few minutes' drive of Hutchison Street, the main road. The visitor centre inside the council offices on Hutchison Street opens 9am to 5pm on weekdays and 9am to 1pm at weekends and on public holidays. Coober Pedy is a dry town: you cannot drink alcohol in the designated town area, and takeaway wine and spirits are limited per person per day, with photo ID needed.

Which opal mine tour is best in Coober Pedy?

Old Timers Mine for history at your own pace, Umoona for a guided tour and the biggest underground museum, Tom's for a working mine, and Riba's for the evening.

• Old Timers Mine is a 1916 opal mine you walk through on your own, with natural opal seams and fossils in the walls, underground homes from 1916 and 1960, and a museum holding the first opal found by Willie Hutchison. Free noodling pits sit outside, and the tour map comes in 14 languages. Adults A$15, concession A$12.50, children 5-16 A$5, families A$40.
• Umoona Opal Mine & Museum calls itself the town's largest underground attraction. Guided tours run at 10am, 2pm and 4pm, for about 45 minutes; on Mondays and Fridays only the 4pm tour is open to the public. The museum, with its inland-sea fossils and the 20-minute film "The Story of Opal", is free, and it is wheelchair friendly.
• Tom's Opal Mine runs guided tours at 10am and 1:30pm, about 1 hour 30 minutes, A$40 for adults, or A$15 self-guided.
• Riba's Evening Opal Mine Tour runs daily from 7pm to 8:30pm and needs at least five people. Adults A$28.

All four Untamed Escapes tours visit Old Timers Mine, which is why most visitors see it first. For digging your own opal, read our noodling guide.

Can you visit an underground house in Coober Pedy?

Yes. Faye's Underground Home, Crocodile Harry's dugout, the dugouts at Umoona and the homes inside Old Timers Mine are all open to visitors.

Faye's was dug by hand by Faye Naylor and two friends in the early 1960s and has the town's first in-ground pool, underground. It opens Monday to Saturday, 9am to 4pm, at A$20 for adults with children 6 to 16 free. Crocodile Harry's, out on Seventeen Mile Road, is a self-guided dugout from 8am to 8pm, A$10 for adults, and his cave appears in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Umoona shows a hand-dug and a machine-dug dugout side by side.

Why underground? Because the rock keeps a steady temperature in the low 20s while summer days pass 40°C outside. You can sleep in one too, and our guide to sleeping underground covers the options.

What are the underground churches in Coober Pedy?

There are four to visit: the Catacomb Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church of Sts Peter and Paul and the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas.

The Serbian Orthodox Church is the one most people photograph, with a scalloped ceiling, rock carvings and stained glass; entry is A$5. The Catacomb Church, cut in the shape of a cross in 1977, is free. Sts Peter and Paul was the first underground church in town and asks for a gold coin donation. The Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas completes the set, a reminder of the European miners who came after the war.

Treat them as working churches: dress modestly and keep quiet if a service is on. On the self-guided Heritage Trail you can link the churches with the John McDouall Stuart monument, which marks the first European explorer through here in 1858, and Boot Hill Cemetery, where one grave has a beer keg for a headstone.

Spend a Saturday out of town: the Moon Plain and the coloured mesas of the Painted Desert by 4WD, with a picnic lunch, four guests at most. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

★ 4.4 · 10 hours · from $225

Explore the Painted Desert day tour → Tour details

What is there to do at night in Coober Pedy?

Night golf with glowing balls, a film at the drive-in on Saturdays, Riba's evening mine tour, the Big Winch film until 9pm, and the stars.

The Coober Pedy Opal Fields Golf Club has 18 holes, par 72, and not a blade of grass. It was founded in 1976 and is played mostly at night with glowing balls; golfers carry a small square of turf to tee off. The council says it is the only club ever granted reciprocal playing rights with St Andrews, and gear can be hired from Opalios. The drive-in, the only one in South Australia, is run by volunteers and shows a film nearly every Saturday night.

Riba's tour starts at 7pm. The Big Winch lookout is free and gives a 360-degree view of town, best as the sun goes down. After that, look up: with so little light around, the night sky out here is huge.

What is there to see near Coober Pedy?

The Kanku-Breakaways about 25 km north, the Dog Fence beyond them, the Moon Plain, and the Painted Desert at Arckaringa, about 148 km away.

The Breakaways are flat-topped mesas and coloured hills in a conservation park that charges A$13.50 per car, best at sunrise or sunset. The Dog Fence, about 5,614 km long, crosses the country just beyond. The Moon Plain is a flat gibber plain that film crews have used for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Pitch Black. All three are covered in our Breakaways guide.

The Painted Desert is further out, on gravel and stony tracks with no fuel on the way, and the ExplorOz trek notes advise against driving it yourself from October to March because of the heat. The Painted Desert day tour does it in about 10 hours by air-conditioned 4WD every Saturday, with lunch.

How do you spend one day in Coober Pedy?

Morning in an opal mine, lunch, an underground church and a dugout home in the afternoon, the Big Winch at sunset, then night golf or Riba's tour.

• 8:30am: Umoona Opal Mine & Museum, with the 10am guided tour (not on Mondays or Fridays) and the free museum.
• Late morning: Old Timers Mine, then the free noodling pits outside it.
• Lunch: in town on Hutchison Street.
• 2pm: the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Catacomb Church, then Faye's Underground Home before it closes at 4pm.
• Sunset: the Big Winch lookout.
• 7pm: Riba's Evening Opal Mine Tour, or night golf if you have booked it.

This is a full day on foot and by car. In summer, keep the outdoor parts for early morning and evening: January's average maximum is 36.7°C.

What can you add with two days in Coober Pedy?

Sunrise at the Kanku-Breakaways, the Dog Fence and the Moon Plain, Crocodile Harry's, a free afternoon at the Public Noodling Area, and the drive-in or the Painted Desert tour on a Saturday.

Start day two early at the Breakaways, about 25 km north, and continue to the Dog Fence. Back in town, visit Crocodile Harry's, Tom's Opal Mine at 1:30pm or the Big Winch film, and spend the late afternoon sifting mullock at the free Public Noodling Area off Jeweller's Shop Road. Josephine's Gallery & Kangaroo Orphanage opens 9:30am to 5pm, with an Aboriginal art and culture talk at A$25 by appointment.

If your stay includes a Saturday, give it to the Painted Desert tour and the drive-in that night. Arriving on a 7-day tour gives you an afternoon and a morning instead: the Explorer's Way hotel tour packs in Old Timers Mine, Josephine's and the Breakaways.

Seven days from Adelaide with a bed every night, an underground motel in Coober Pedy, Old Timers Mine, Josephine's and the Breakaways. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

New · 7 days · from $1,721

Explore the Explorer's Way hotel tour north → Tour details

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