Weird doesn’t begin to describe the Opal Capital of Australia – Coober Pedy. This is quite likely the least picturesque place we’ll ever see – and we’ve been to LA.

To get there from Uluru we backtrack along the Lasseter Highway to the Erdlunda roadhouse, and turn south on the Stuart Highway to Coober Pedy. There’s a very real sense of complete and utter isolation, as the bleakness of the highway and landscape is only interrupted by the corpses of kangaroos and a roadhouse every 100-200kms. We identify roadhouses by three means: it is the only sign of habitation for tens, if not hundreds, of kilometres; fuel bowsers line up outside; and when you walk in the door the smell of the deep fryer knocks you flat.

Vast tracks of inhospitable plains, devoid of vegetation, dominate the view and you can’t help but wonder how Stuart and other explorers felt as they battled across the scrubby desert looking at what must’ve seemed to be an unreachable horizon.  Unrelenting heat, flies, prickly spinifex, which gets under the skin and sets up infection, and all manner of other bite-y things ready and willing to have a go at them, yet they doggedly ploughed on with their horses and camels.  

Coming into Coober Pedy itself I think we’ve taken a wrong turn and arrived in Fallujah. Sandy mounds which appear to be the result of cluster bombs (we discover they’re mine tailings known as mullock heaps) and broken down machinery are all we see.

In Summer temperatures regularly reach 47 degrees and above.  How the hell do you live in this environment? Well, 1,700 people do, and most of them were just passing through and got bitten by the desert bug. Either that or they were running from the law. For relief from the heat you go underground: homes (dugouts), motels, bars, hotels, cafes, even churches, and there are half a dozen of those, are built into the sides of sandstone mounds. This is relatively easy as it is a soft stone but also incredibly stable – there’s never been anything close to a collapse, either in a mine or a house. There is at least a 2 metre thick “ceiling”. Inside, the houses are like any, but with very little light other than what comes through the entrance and any windows on the front face. The temperature remains at a comfortable 24 C all year round. Walking into one on a 38 degree day felt deliciously cool.

As with all mining towns, the fortunes of Coober Pedy have waxed and waned. The first opals were discovered in 1915, and by 1999 about a quarter of a million mine shaft entrances had been sunk – that means 250,000 mullock heaps, giving the impression giant moles have been at work. Opal mining is very democratic. No corporates or industrial production: you turn up, get a permit, stake a claim and commence digging. Mines are generally owned and run by two or three people and by law you can only own one claim for one year and it is only 100 metres square. Over the years the particular type of sandstone and mining has led to invention – a Coober Pedy designed piece of kit hoovers up the waste stone created by boring machines and when the bin is full, deposits it alongside the mine entry – the mullock heap.

For a bit of light relief we check out the golf course. This is a game to play at night in Coober Pedy to escape the heat, and that means using florescent golf balls. To make the greens smooth, apply sump oil. I know you think I’m making this up, but I’m not.

The real beauty comes when we take a trip out to the Breakaways.  We head north east towards Oodnadatta, also known as the middle of the middle of nowhere. On the way there’s the longest fence in the world, the Dingo Fence, 5,531 km enclosing large swathes of South Australia, all of Victoria and NSW and some of Southern Queensland, to protect cattle and sheep country in the south.

We cross what is, for all money, where they could have filmed the moon landing 50 years ago – and I’m no conspiracy theorist. This landscape is lunar and set against photos of the surface of the moon it is difficult to tell the difference. There are shells littering the sand again evidence of what was once the inland sea.

But the real gem is yet to come. There are not enough adjectives to describe the beauty of the Breakaways, a series of rocky mesas interrupting the flat desert. If you are a Mad Max fan, or have seen the movie Priscilla Queen of the Desert you have probably already seen the Breakaways. At first, heavy dark clouds the like of which are rarely seen in these parts crowd the horizon making a dramatic backdrop, then within the hour it all clears.

We go to watch the sunset and are not disappointed as the light brings out the colours in the sandstone.

And so ends a trip to weirdsville.