We finally got to White Cliffs – a destination we’ve been eager to get to since coming to the outback.  It’s a 3 hour drive from broken hill and is an opal mining town where the population lives in ‘dugouts’ in the hills.  It can get up to around 50°C in summer but the underground dugouts stay about 23°C even on the hottest days.

Someone’s observatory on top of their dugout

Jim’s place …obviously

Someone’s front yard

We stayed a night in the Underground hotel which was quite an experience.  The kids loved running around the tunnels and corridors.  It was the perfect setting for a game of hide and seek!

Karls room

The kids room

A chill out area

The tunnels

An air vent going up to the ground level

Getting back up to ground level

On top of the motel is an observatory to watch the sunrise, sunsets and look at the stars

Looking through the telescope

Enjoying the sunset

The hotel observatory

You can’t come to White Cliffs without trying your luck at some opal fossicking, so Brad from the Fossickers Den showed us how to do it.

We found some opals!

Morning tea time

Digging digging

our best raw unpolished opals, blue and purple

Marama found the opal of the day

Brad’s heavy duty opal mining machine