In Coober Pedy, everything's underground!
Not just churches
Merv's waiting here for us
Let's have a look what's inside
Hi Merv
This is a normal home here in Coober Pedy
it's called a 'Dugout'
Dug+out means 'To dig the earth out'
5 meters deep!
He said that the first room in every house has to be the kitchen
It's not just because they like eating
They're smart
The reason why the kitchen has to be the first room in the house
is so that the cooking smells can ventilate out easily
If they made it too far in, it would make ventilation more difficult
This is about 5 metres. You can see how deep down we are.
The next room is a bedroom
But Merv's using it as a storage room
They've painted it white here
You can see that they've painted it white here
It seals the rock
So that the dust doesn't fall down
It's beautiful
This is his office in here and it's fully equipped with ADSL internet
So you can use the internet and get your work done
just like any other office
This hole was the original entrance to the house
This home was built 70 years ago
In the olden days, they didn't have a front door like we have now
They needed to descend down this hole in order to get into the living room
Normally if we're taking a tour of someone's home, we'll progressively move upstairs right?
But that's not the case here. Here we need to go further down.
This part is the original part
But around 20 years ago, they decided that they wanted to make some extensions
Where could they extend to?
They brought a machine in and extended down here
Up top was hand done
Down there was done with a machine
Let's take a look
This is the extension
They used a machine here
This is the library
He said that suppose you thought it was time to have another baby
You don't need to worry about whether or not you'll have enough space
All you have to do if you're planning on a new member in the family
Is to bring a jack-hammer home
And you can make a brand new room
It will only take one or two days
Furniture shops would go bankrupt here
You don't even need to buy furniture
If you want to make a new TV shelf or bookshelf
You just bring a jack-hammer in and there you have it
In order to bring the machine in here, it needed to pass through this entrance
It's a big opening
They would bring the machine in this way and gradually knock the stone away
When it's closed like this, you honestly don't know whether or not it's day or night
You can just close it up like this and you're laughing
He said that Coober Pedy is scorching hot
it reaches 50 deg Celsius outside
But inside, all year round whether outside is hot or cold
inside here, it will be a constant 24 degrees
night time, morning, evening or the middle of the day
It stays at a constant 24 degrees
The best thing is is that there are no neighbours!
It's so quiet
But if you wanted to make a loud noise, you can
Noone will be screaming at you to turn it down
You can hold a party or Karaoke
No-one is going to yell at you
This is really Neua Chan Phan Plaek
I'm really impressed
Could you live there?
It would be an interesting experience
If it was just for a short time
But it looked kind of lonely didn't it?
He told me that there are around 200,000 tourists that visit Coober Pedy each year
It's a tourist spot now?
The tourism industry does more for their economy than mining now
The revenue that stimulates the economy mainly comes from tourism now
And there are also many countries that go there to shoot movies
Our guide Merv used to be in the film industry and often found himself going back and forth between Coober Pedy
He began to take a real liking to Coober Pedy
and finally decided that he'd be better of just packing up and moving there
The guy just now right? The owner of the house we saw?
He wasn't a native from there?
He's actually a New Zealander
Oh
But he had traveled there so many times
he ended up moving there and buying a house
Talkng about being lonely
I asked him, because I was also curious
He told me that the ratio of men to women that live there
is around 1 woman to 50 guys
Ok, I'm not going anymore. It's better for me to stay here!
- But.. - Here in Thailand it's around 1 guy to 4 girls
There are around 200,000 tourists
The majority of those are female
Ok, I'm going again now
So there's a balance there
- They have everything there right? - Yes, everything
He said, yeah... sometimes you get a little lonely
But not THAT lonely
Because there's a big turnover of people with the tourism and all
Is there a hospital there?
Yes
So you could say that it's a fully functional city
Yes, it has everything
And they have restaurants with food from all around the world
We met Philippinos and even a Thai lady
Did you meet any Thais?
Yes, we met a Thai lady
She was really excited to see us
And she can even get Channel 5 there
Wow! In that case, we have to say a special hi to you down there
Hi to all the Thai viewers in Coober Pedy
- They receive it via satellite - Down there in Australia
Jay's been there already
I want to go too!
Today we've heard a really Neua Chan Phan Plaek story
From Australia
Thank you very much Jay For this weeks story