The opal capital of the world. Around 70 percent of the planet’s precious opal comes from this town in the South Australian desert, where it is so brutally hot that half the population lives underground in dugout homes, churches and hotels carved into the rock. The fields are pocked with a century of shafts, and fossicking (rummaging the mullock heaps) is a local pastime, but never walk the fields at night and never go near an unmarked shaft. PUBLIC fossicking areas exist; the mines are PRIVATE claims.
Precious opal
See it on the map
