Weirdness Underground in Coober Pedy

Coober Pedy.  Now, that’s one heck of a town!  And how can you not love a town that has signs like this!

I loved it!  It’s just cool!  Well, no… it’s hot! It’s FRICKIN hot!!  Like extremely dry, cant get rid of the dry heat HOT!

It’s in the outback in the middle of nowhere en-route to Alice Springs.  Only 3,000 people live there and they’re all there for one thing.  Opal.

I found this amazing place online – it’s one of the top three hostels to stay in the world and I can see why.  It’s cool.  It’s about six meters underground and it’s got character!

We tucked in for the night around 10:00 – and well, it just started to get a bit noisy down at the other end.  There was a bit of howling, screaming… chanting.. the works.  First, I thought it was only one person, but it seems that there were two or three.

In the dorm next to us, was a random 19 year old German guy (they’re everywhere at the moment); we invited him into our area – safety in numbers.

See, we’re ready for the Zombie Apocalypse.  We’ve been planning on it.   We’ve got an axe, a brand new orange murder shovel, spear gun and a knife.  If zombies come close, we’re set.

Okay – here’s the problem.  We’re thinking that this ‘person’ who is currently backpacking in the ‘dungeon’ is definitely not from the this world. There’s a lot of howling followed by sounds of a screaming banshee. Basically, we’re not ready for vampires, hybrids or exorcisms!

Did I mention we don’t have a door on our dorm room?

Did I mention there’s only one way in and one way out?!??!??!?!?!!!

All this is going on, and it got to the point that we needed to emerge from underground and see if something could be done to solve this adrenaline surging issue.

The front door of reception says ‘use bell in case of emergency’ – there’s no bell! There’s double sided tape were it was previously – have we been set up to fail?

We asked ourselves… is it safer inside or out? Underground no one can hear you scream – unless you’re underground as well… and where’s the help in that!

We descended back into the cavern, grabbed Mr Germany and found another dorm with an actual door, (further barricading it with the spare chair), tucked into our respective bunks, and slept to the sounds of the banshee.

That morning, we spoke with the host and told him what had happened.  He took the matter very seriously and went to investigate.

An hour later, I got a call from him – turns out that the ‘guest’ got a bit unruly and the cops had to come and take her away – maybe we weren’t that far from the truth…

We had a very interesting night in a very interesting place.

It’s amazing how one guest can really make things go weird… but, we’ll go back again next time we’re in town! The design is incredible, the beds are comfortable and the host is a true blue Aussie character! We highly recommend the place for future Coober Pedy travellers!