At the risk of sounding like a Coober Pedy travel brochure

It was all about the opal. Back breaking days digging, sometimes for years trying to find something to make it all worth while. The town is surrounded by mounds of dirt, years and years of digging by miners. There are signs everywhere prohibiting entry into the leases. More signs everywhere telling people not to run, and not to walk backwards. There are a lot of deep shafts down there, which apparently a lot of people have fallen into. Point taken.
Some people dig for years. The owner of the caravan park we stayed in, Gianni, had a lease and searched for opal for five years, not finding anything really. He sold the lease, and surprise, surprise, the new owner found opal and made a nice little penny out of it.
Also, the house permits up there are a strange thing. Apparently mining in the town centre is now prohibited. But you get your house permit, blow it out with explosives, drag out the dust and I'm sure you'll find something. However, you don't need planning permission to add rooms to your dugout house. The only rule is that you need to stay four metres away from your neighbours. Several houses there have ten bedrooms.  A lot of renovation happening in the town. Seems they might have found a bit more opal, but they're not going to own up to that one!

 

There is a bit more though, to the Coober Pedy story. A few kilometres north of the town is a place called the Breakaways. You're not allowed to mine up there - it's too beautiful, although the locals reckon there would be a lot of opal under the ground. There is probably a pretty good chance that you've seen this landscape as the back drop in the odd movie or two. Anyone see Mad Max2... or Priscilla?