Coober Pedy, the Australian town built underground to withstand extreme heat • FRANCE 24 English

Coober Pedy, the Australian town built underground to withstand extreme heat • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] [Applause] [Music] located in the middle of the Outback you’ll find the mining town of kuber petti originally put on the map for the mining of Opals over the past Century the precious stone has been found less and less and today its main attraction is the town itself with many of its homes shops and businesses built underground come in okay this is my Dugout come in as you can see it’s all handbuilt and kitchen sitting area like in Europe This is the the my bedroom and uh as you can see its bed and then walking um CS along and you can see the Mark here this is the width of the machine these are the cutting marks from the teeth living below the surface has its advantages like low energy costs you don’t need AC because the temperature fluctuates from 20 to maybe 27° that’s all you have because you live underground you don’t have a house we you have to cool and or heat in Winter floor heating or whatever today 60% % of its residents live in underground homes here even the church and bar are built into the Earth hello welcome to come here an opportunity for tourists to grab a drink down under this is amazing cuz my husband thought I would stay outside cuz I don’t like being claustrophobic yeah but it’s awesome yeah the idea for living underground came about at the beginning of the 20th century this museum is one of the first trite dwellings so I come up through here guys built in 1916 it continues to be preserved today this is how the early miners you know used to live um you’ll see here this is the entrance this is early what the miner did was he carved just a basic bed frame out of the Sandstone so very basic living conditions yeah you want live underground to get out of the heat residents of kuber petty have come up with clever ways to avoid the heat how you going man good like these two friends who’ve come out to enjoy a nighttime round of golf in the cool evening air during the day he just wouldn’t do it n it’s just way too hot so even people that’s why a lot of miners don’t mine in the summertime cuz it’s just too hot to be out in the fields in order to play in the dark the holes are lit up and they use fluorescent golf balls turns it off wave it across turns it back with magic and that’ll glow all night golfing in an area where nothing grows requires players to bring their own square of grass it just protects the clubs from all the Rocks so without the grass this club would be thrown away a long time ago it’s Unique that way despite kuber Petty’s rough environment plagued by heat and dust some 1500 people live in the town today half as many than during its opal boom

As spring temperatures begin to rise in Europe, we see how one town in Australia has been learning to live with extreme heat for the past century. Situated in the middle of the desert, where summer temperatures reach up to 50°C, is Coober Pedy, a town built underground and originally established as a mining centre for opals. Over the past 100 years, residents have adapted to life in this extreme environment, only coming out at night when temperatures drop. Our France 2 colleagues report, with FRANCE 24’s Lauren Bain.

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/ALiR.y

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