Underland

It is a hot day in the desolated Simpson Desert. A man walks through the tunnels of his underground house with a torch in his hand. He lives twenty-five meters under the red soil, where he has been finding opal for over twenty years. It was an old mine that he transformed into a roof over his head: a home that promise to have plenty of opal in the walls. “I got my own bank if I want to get a shovel out”. Says Martin, an English miner.

Coober Pedy, which derives from the aboriginal name Kupa-Piti or, white man hole, is a town located in the middle of the Australian outback and is isolated 850 kilometers out of the nearest big city. Coober Pedy inhabits a subterranean culture, in which the majority of the population goes after the great wealth of opal. This is an unconventional town where most of social and personal life takes place under the vast and lonely land itself.

Since 1915 Coober Pedy has been mined for its Opal, a valuable gemstone worth millions. With more than seventy opal fields, Coober Pedy is the largest Opal mining area in the world. Among a population of 1695 habitants, Coober Pedy offers a home to forty-five different nationalities of immigrants, ex-prisoners, and veterans of the World War who have decided to escape their past lives and take refuge in underground houses called dugouts.

Each year, mining work has been decreasing on all fronts. There are less miners working on the fields and young people don’t want to commit to it because of the eminent danger and its unstable source of income. It is a crazy and unusual life; they could be millionaire any day or they could not find anything for years.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Gabriele, German immigrant, waits in the kitchen for her husband to return from mining. Approximately sixty percent of the population of Coober Pedy lives in underground houses called dugouts.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Trucks, cars and junk from old machinery decorate Coober Pedy´s landscape, waiting to be used as spare parts.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

An unexpected storm hits Coober Pedy at the beginning of 2016, dropping the half amount of water in two days as a full year. Miners need to wait for the ground to dry in order to go back to work.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Underground Orthodox Church built in 1993 by the Serbian community. Every Sunday the monk offers service.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Joe, Italian immigrant, has an underground museum with his private collection of stones including fossils, opal and other antiques that he has found in the desert around Coober Pedy.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Tony, Italian immigrant, dreams of building a huge and luxurious house and private Opal museum underground.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Goran a miner from the former Yugoslavia, works with a circular tunneling machine to potentially gain more access to the gemstone.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

An oil painting showing the dumps of dirt made by the tunneling machine while searching for Opal. The painting hangs in the wall of an underground house.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Opal is one of the most valuable gemstones in the world. Its price varies between one and ten million dollars, depending on its type, color and weight.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Jürgen is a German miner who works by himself. After other miners had stopped working in their mines, he searches for any trace of Opal left behind.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

During the night, Peter searches with a black light UV torch, the opal pieces that miners have left behind on the opal fields.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

Goran a miner from the former Yugoslavia, searches for any trace of opal on the wall. He has been finding a good amount of Opal while working on this mine by himself for more than three years.

alt="© Tamara Merino Bloch "

This group of children usually go to the yard or the hills near their houses to look for little pieces of opal on the ground. Some of them have an amazing and big collection of opals that they found by themselves over the years.

Aerial view of the mining fields. Coober Pedy is the largest Opal mining location in the world.

Costa and Peter, Greek miners, are prospecting on an Opal field. The extremely high temperatures during the day force them to work at dusk.

Vertical shaft use for moving heavy machinery in and out the mine. This type of machinery usually stays down in the mine during the working period, be it days or months at a time.

Jürgen, German miner, prepares the tools to lowers himself into a twenty meters deep vertical shaft of an opal mine.

Every dugout needs to have ventilation shafs in order to recycle the air inside the underground house. This tubes are the extension of each shaft and they prevent water and dust coming into the dugout.

Digging with an excavator is another technique of opal mining in Coober Pedy, which allows miners to explore a bigger areas.

Dumps of dirt made by a drilling machine. There are over two million shafts that have been excavated for prospection and extraction of opal.