I hadn’t heard of Cooper Pedy until the time when we were living in Renmark and a few of the others were talking about this place in the desert where people were living underground. I soon imagined how everything was under the earth and how you could walk from your home down an underground alley to the grocery store, to the restaurants etc. Then I thought that you would able to see holes in the ground, entrances, where stairs are leading to the underground city. It sounds pretty fucking cool, doesn’t it? Thats just not how it is, unfortunately.

Cooper Pedy is definitely something special though. A small percentage of the inhabitants live underground. Most people live in ‘dug-out’ which means they live in the side of a hill, so basically still on ground and others “just” live on ground in normal houses. There is a lot of special people living there and just living here must be special. There is not much to do. We struggled finding something to do, however, we did actually end up doing something, while we had to wait until our car was ready at the mechanic.

We visited Umoona Museum which had a lot about dinosaurs, geology and aboriginal history. Unfortunately, the guided tours of the mine were not running until 2 hours later. They are only $10 and gives you a tour of an old mine and an old underground house.

So instead we walked to Old Timers Mine, where we payed $15 each to go on a self-guided tour into the old mine. Down here an old underground house was also on display. That was quite interesting and worth a visit.

We also visited Josephine’s Gallery and Kangaroo Orphanage, where you can feed the kangaroos at 12 pm and 5.30 pm. The kangaroos have either been rescued after suffering injury from being hit by cars or because their mom was killed and they were still safe and alive inside the pouch. Unfortunately, in SA you are not allowed to set the wild animals free again, so they keep on living here unless other options are carried out.

We also made a small visit to the underground catholic church. There are a few different churches here. It was interesting to see how a church looked inside, when it was built underground.

One morning we had breakfast at Waffles & Gems. Their waffles are AMAZING!! It is definitely worth stopping by them and having a small breakfast. I don’t think anyone else in town can compete with them on that breakfast.

…. and ofcourse we had to take some photos in front of the ‘Welcome to Cooper Pedy’ sign with an old mining truck on top. If you wanna find the sign, it is just next to the highway before you turn off to Cooper Pedy.