The Mining Town Where People Live Under the Earth (cnet.com) 105
Claire Reilly, writing for CNET: After spending a night in an underground rock cave in the middle of the Australian desert, I learned three things: The silence is deafening. Your eyes never adjust to the darkness. And if nobody brushes the ceiling before you arrive, that clump of dirt is going to scare the living hell out of you when it drops on your face at 2 a.m. I've flown 1,200 miles for the privilege of sleeping in a hole in Coober Pedy. There's no Wi-Fi down here. The glare of my MacBook feels obnoxious in the subterranean stillness. The TV plays ads for a "local" cleaning service from the next town over, but that just happens to be 400 miles away. Australia is a country defined by "the tyranny of distance," but traveling to the underground opal mining town of Coober Pedy feels like taking a holiday on Mars.
In the middle of the South Australian desert and an eight hour drive in either direction from the nearest capital city (Adelaide to the south or Alice Springs to the north), Coober Pedy is off the grid and mostly hidden underground. More than half the residents live buried in the bedrock in cavelike homes called "dugouts" in order to escape freezing winters, scorching summers and the occasional cyclone. Often, the only sign you're walking on someone's roof is the air vent that's sprouted up next to your boots. While first nation peoples have lived in the central Australian desert for thousands of years, the Coober Pedy we know today wouldn't exist without opals. Miners rushed here in the 1920s, enduring extreme conditions to hunt for the multicolored gems, digging, bulldozing and eventually blasting out earth in a bid to find the elusive seam that would make them rich. Living in Coober Pedy is not just about surviving. It's about carving out a way of life in one of the harshest environments on the planet.
[...] "It's not like we're living thousands of kilometers under the ground," he tells me. "It's pretty similar to living in a normal house." Sam's family, who live in a dugout close to Crocodile Harry's, have solar panels for power -- but those generate only enough electricity for a few hours a day. Diesel handles the rest, he says. "We have to rely on tourists to pay for our fuel," he says. "Gasoline is valuable out here. Fuel is really expensive." That means no fridge running all day and night -- they keep nonperishable food and get the rest from town every day. Otherwise, life is pretty similar to what other 18-year-olds in the city experience. Sam says he can still charge his phone and use the TV "for a bit." "We have internet when the generator's on. Dad's got an Xbox but we don't even try to use the solar for that."
In the middle of the South Australian desert and an eight hour drive in either direction from the nearest capital city (Adelaide to the south or Alice Springs to the north), Coober Pedy is off the grid and mostly hidden underground. More than half the residents live buried in the bedrock in cavelike homes called "dugouts" in order to escape freezing winters, scorching summers and the occasional cyclone. Often, the only sign you're walking on someone's roof is the air vent that's sprouted up next to your boots. While first nation peoples have lived in the central Australian desert for thousands of years, the Coober Pedy we know today wouldn't exist without opals. Miners rushed here in the 1920s, enduring extreme conditions to hunt for the multicolored gems, digging, bulldozing and eventually blasting out earth in a bid to find the elusive seam that would make them rich. Living in Coober Pedy is not just about surviving. It's about carving out a way of life in one of the harshest environments on the planet.
[...] "It's not like we're living thousands of kilometers under the ground," he tells me. "It's pretty similar to living in a normal house." Sam's family, who live in a dugout close to Crocodile Harry's, have solar panels for power -- but those generate only enough electricity for a few hours a day. Diesel handles the rest, he says. "We have to rely on tourists to pay for our fuel," he says. "Gasoline is valuable out here. Fuel is really expensive." That means no fridge running all day and night -- they keep nonperishable food and get the rest from town every day. Otherwise, life is pretty similar to what other 18-year-olds in the city experience. Sam says he can still charge his phone and use the TV "for a bit." "We have internet when the generator's on. Dad's got an Xbox but we don't even try to use the solar for that."
Down under in Down under (Score:2)
It fits.
This Is A Bit Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That means no fridge running all day and night.
The average energy drain of modern refrigerator is 25-40 watts. Actual power drain while the compressor is running is 100-150 watts. If they have any power at all on a 24 hour basis they should be able to run a refrigerator, though perhaps not open the door for part of the day to keep the compressor from kicking on. Since they do have power part of the day for sure, a 0.5 kWh battery should cover the refrigerator nicely.
Re:This Is A Bit Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
That means no fridge running all day and night.
The average energy drain of modern refrigerator is 25-40 watts. Actual power drain while the compressor is running is 100-150 watts. If they have any power at all on a 24 hour basis they should be able to run a refrigerator, though perhaps not open the door for part of the day to keep the compressor from kicking on. Since they do have power part of the day for sure, a 0.5 kWh battery should cover the refrigerator nicely.
Refrigerators use more power when upside down.
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A typical undercounter fridge is around 60w, and has start-up spikes over 1kw - but you're correct they should be able to run a fridge. I live off solar in northern Europe so how the hell they can't live off solar in Australian is a mystery. I can only assume they don't know what they are doing and charging a pathetic leisure battery
A 1 kW spike seems high, I am looking an actual refrigerator spec that says the peak, worst case draw is 6.5 A in the US (780 watts), but with a battery backing it they should have no trouble with the very short surge.
Boaters deal with these issues too. I've got to think that a solution also exists in the boating community.
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I stopped worrying about the cold air when realizing all the energy is in the food itself (and packaging) and the weight of lost air is rather minuscule. I'd rather let the stinky air out.
If you are hyper-concerned about energy usage, like the people in this scenario would be, you would care. You added heat to the system when you opened the door. The fridge is going to have to dispose of that heat, even if it's a small amount, to get back to its set point. Also keep in mind that it measures temp based on air, not the food or other solids inside. So that warmer air is going to kick on the compressor before it has a chance to cool by dumping it's energy into your food (and packaging). Not
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So they shouldn't have a problem if they just provide more power? You sound like you live somewhere where cheap power is a thing.
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I expect these folk are living hand to mouth and the possibility of buying enough solar and batteries plus a refrigerator are beyond their budget. Also you shouldn't underestimate the increased cost of everything just because you're in the middle of no where.
I haven't been to Australia for decades, but as I recall practically everything is shipped by truck, the rail lines went belly up years ago. Gas prices are ~$7 a gallon. Diesel is even more expensive. That has to translate to higher cost for everything,
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> "It's not like we're living thousands of kilometers under the ground," he tells me.
No, not at all. That would be quite a bit hotter.
From where I stand, they are thousands of kilometers under the ground.
featured in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Score:2)
Towards the end, Jedediah the Pilot and his son live in a cave hideout at the end of the railroad line. I believe that was shot in Coober Pedy. listed in the credits.
Re: featured in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Score:3)
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Much of it is very very un-inhabitable. Doesn't change our government(s) pushing for incredibly crazy high immigration rates AND not spending money on infrastructure.
They get paper based GDP growth and 'the numbers go higher' for many things but the actual standard of living quality, job quantity and wage growth is going bad bad bad for people.
They don't care, this is a huge country, shovel em all in! What could go wrong?
(Golly, why are more and more people homeless, unemployed or working 3 separate part t
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Sounds like they're copying from John Key's playbook. They were so enamoured with him, for some reason.
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Doesn't change our government(s) pushing for incredibly crazy high immigration rates AND not spending money on infrastructure.
The problem really is the combination of the two. Our high immigration rates wouldn't be an issue if we weren't trying to shove them all into capital cities. And it wouldn't make very much infrastructure investment in regional centres to make the problem basically go away.
So... Hobbits Live in Australia Not New Zealand (Score:2)
Take a look at the houses in the story. Nice circular doorways, round rooms. They could use some sprucing up of the paneling and such, but it looks like a Hobbit burrow.
Re:Needs more solar panels (Score:4, Informative)
From de article: "have solar panels for power -- but those generate only enough electricity for a few hours a day"
Come on! Solar panels today are cheap enough to supply almost all the power you need. I have just 8 in my house and that's already enough to use power lavishly.
I guess they sort of enjoy to live like that. That's the only possible explanation.
Given that one has to run lights 24 hours a day underground and solar panels are day time only power, isn't it going to take some batteries to supply one's electric needs? I think so. Also, there is the question of wiring lengths. 24V DC needs some pretty large conductors to get very far carrying usable current levels. Not to mention the toxic nature of battery chemistry, marking the need to keep them away from living spaces and providing adequate ventilation. One doesn't need lead acid batteries underground, nor are LiIon options necessarily safe.
Having solar panels while on the grid is one thing, having solar panels as one's sole source of power is quite another, being underground adds additional challanges.
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Remember that bulbs use much less power than they used to. 20W LED uses as much power as a 100W incandescent used to. 12ga cable can carry 20amps or 480W at 24VDC. You can literally run 24 bulbs off of a standard cable on a low-volt system.
The problem is big appliances with motors, not lighting. As far as the batteries, the panels need to be above ground -- you can also stick the batteries in a box aboveground and run cable down to the cave-house.
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20W LED uses as much power as a 100W incandescent used to.
Do you want to think about that statement for a second?
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Re:Needs more solar panels (Score:4, Insightful)
12ga cable can carry 20amps or 480W at 24VDC.
Ah, but the ISSUE is voltage drop over the length of the cable. @ 20 amps, 100 ft of 12ga cable is going to drop more than 25% of the voltage, turning that 24 V into about 17. You lose 6.35 V over that 12ga run. The problem with low voltage systems is voltage drop over distances. To keep 100ft of cable to within 10% voltage loss, you are going to spend a pile on wire, running 8ga, which will get you right at 10% loss @ 24 volts in. Most equipment is OK with about 10% of rated input voltage.
So that 480W in will turn into about 380W at the load using 100 ft of 12ga wire (you will lose about 100W) 12 ga may be SAFE at 20A for fire reasons, but it doesn't mean it's usable in a low voltage system.
This is what killed Edison's DC power business and brought Westinghouse's AC power into common use. With AC you can step the voltage up and down at will using transformers, lowering the current for the same power and lose less power/voltage over the smaller cables. BTW, If you go to a 12 V (13.8 actually) system things get even worse for you, with the loss of over half of your input power and half your voltage trying to push 20 Amps over 12Ga.
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Yep, you're correct about voltage drop in addition to fire safety, though I'd say 10ga would likely be fine at 24 volts and 20 amps. Round-trip resistance is 0.2 ohms per 100 ft, so you'd end up with a 4V drop. Assuming the real voltage of the system is closer to 28V, you'd still be within spec.
12ga is 0.325 ohms per 100 ft. You could keep voltage drop acceptable at 12 amps, which still allows for 25-30 100W-equivalent lamps. Not terrible.
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Don't forget that a circuit a round trip... So 100 ft between source and load is 200 ft of wire. 100ft of wire is only 50 ft between source and load.
Low voltage systems (under 48 V) are susceptible to line loss at high current/power levels. It's just a fact of life. And living on solar power is very much a low voltage DC affair without additional equipment. You can do it, my brother did in the jungle with solar panels (and a diesel generator for cloudy and/or high demand days), but he kept the wiring ru
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Two options - don't run any low-voltage DC. PV + batteries + inverter to produce 240VAC for everything (plus a backup generator, of course). There are efficiency losses converting PV/battery DC to AC, and losses again when charging batteries, but you don't have to worry about losses in the cable runs. Also, 240VAC cable, lights, and appliances are CHEAP, compared to 24VDC cable, lights and appliances. I should know, I live in a house dual-wired for 24VDC and 240VAC. 24 volt light bulbs either halogen or LED
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Congratulations. History repeats itself.
DC was initially the technology of choice being pushed by the well known Thomas Edison himself. Initially it made inroads in electrification of cities, but the voltage drop problem was real and Westinghouse, armed with Tesla's patents for AC, was the better technology. The only issue AC had was being able to run electric motors, as nobody had figured out how to do this until after Edison already had a foot hold.
My post was an attempt to point out that the propose
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I'll keep the DC lighting circuit (there's a DC refrigerator on its own circuit, too) because I like to have options. My inverter blew a control board once and while it was being repaired I only had the generator for AC - and it's not healthy for electronics to run directly off a generator. I still had lighting and refrigeration running directly off the batteries.
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24V DC needs some pretty large conductors to get very far carrying usable current levels.
I wonder how using rebar would work. Weld on some tabs and tin 'em for corrosion protection, and run at least one conductor through PVC conduit for protection. Is 1/2" rebar fat enough to do any good? It's certainly cheap enough, and bigger than 4/0ga wire...
Batteries (Score:2)
Given that one has to run lights 24 hours a day underground and solar panels are day time only power, isn't it going to take some batteries to supply one's electric needs?
Umm, yes... This is not a revelation.
Also, there is the question of wiring lengths. 24V DC needs some pretty large conductors to get very far carrying usable current levels.
This is not a serious issue. The issue is digging the hole for the wire, not the gauge of the wire. The cost differential between a big fat wire and a more modest one is extremely modest compared with the cost of solar panels, the battery, and the trenching/digging to get the cables where they are needed.
Not to mention the toxic nature of battery chemistry, marking the need to keep them away from living spaces and providing adequate ventilation.
Just because the people are underground doesn't mean the batteries would need to be. And even if they were that is a well understood problem with well understood sol
Not similar to city life (Score:4, Informative)
Otherwise, life is pretty similar to what other 18-year-olds in the city experience.
Ummm, no it isn't. It isn't much like life in any city. Not saying it's better or worse but it definitely isn't what I'd call similar. For one thing I'm pretty confident the dating scene isn't exactly a target rich environment. And 24/7 access to electricity and places to go use it is not a trivial difference.
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Otherwise, life is pretty similar to what other 18-year-olds in the city experience.
Ummm, no it isn't. It isn't much like life in any city. Not saying it's better or worse but it definitely isn't what I'd call similar. For one thing I'm pretty confident the dating scene isn't exactly a target rich environment. And 24/7 access to electricity and places to go use it is not a trivial difference.
I lived in Australia (Melbourne) as a kid in the 60s. My first impression was that it was like living in the US 20 years ago. Not in a bad way, we still had creature comforts, but life was...simpler. We learned about Coober Pedy in school. I remember seeing a semaphore traffic light in a country town we drove through: it was a clock face, divided into red, yellow and green sectors. A hand went around the clock face. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
In the Melbourne suburbs (2d biggest city in Aus
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*banking*
And by "20 years ago", I mean 1940. It was just more "Andy Griffith Mayberry". I was in 3rd grade, and I walked home a mile from school every day. Didn't think a thing of it.
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And by "20 years ago", I mean 1940. It was just more "Andy Griffith Mayberry". I was in 3rd grade, and I walked home a mile from school every day. Didn't think a thing of it.
There are towns and cities in the US with no school bus system -- kids either walk or take public transportation. I know, I grew up in such a place.
We don't have school buses in Finland, and it's common for students to walk or cycle a couple of km to school. We're such a backwards country.
(When I was in school in the 80s/90s, you'd get free public transportation or taxi to school if the trip was more than 5 km one way. I don't know if that has changed, but I still don't see any school buses around.)
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Electric trams otherwise known as light rail are present in many cities and more American cities are catching up. SO maybe the 2030s not the 1930s.
What the author probably means is teenagers in most advanced cities live in the basement playing video games so no difference (poor attempt at a joke I will grant you)
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And Sydney is pretty much Australia's financial capital,
Maybe now, but not in the 1960s.
A horse-drawn cart in the 1960s!? It must have been to be more quiet while people were still sleeping.
In the UK they used electric milk trucks back then.
And Melbourne still had trams back then? Amazing.
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Ummm, no it isn't. It isn't much like life in any city. Not saying it's better or worse but it definitely isn't what I'd call similar. For one thing I'm pretty confident the dating scene isn't exactly a target rich environment. And 24/7 access to electricity and places to go use it is not a trivial difference.
I guess he wants to say something like "We live in caves, but we're not cavemen" because the reporter is there to make an article on this primitive society but they have TV, phones, computers, Internet and an Xbox. Like many tourist destinations it's now probably more or less a sham where they put on a show but in reality live much more modern, mundane lives. I remember seeing a documentary about a guy who stayed with a tribe in the Amazon for a long time, like much longer than a tourist group or news crew
Before the Apocalypse (Score:2)
So pretty much Mad Max already.
And If I work all day... (Score:1)
... in the blue sky mine
there'll be food on the table tonight.
Interesting place to visit, but ... (Score:2)
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Spent a few days in Coober Pedy during January, 1992
If you are an expert on Coober Pedy, does that make you a Coober Pedy-phile?
Not quite the end of the earth but close (Score:1)
Firstly Alice Springs isn't a Capital City. Darwin is the Capital of the Northern Territory and it's another 13 hour drive (at 70-80mph) after Alice Springs to get there.
Like all mining towns it's dirty, expensive and doesn't offer much in the way of culture. It exists just because of its location and when the gems are all dug up it will be left as a series of holes in the ground. There are similar places in the US.
Alice Springs is NOT a Capital (Score:1)
Capital of the Northern Territory is Darwin... another ~1500km further North.
Where does this person come from? (Score:2, Informative)
Clearly the author of the story possesses neither a map nor any knowledge of Australia. A few corrections to the story: Coober Pedy is not in the "middle of the South Australian desert", it's near the border between two deserts. Failure to understand such things has resulted in others losing their lives due after making poor decisions. Alice Springs is not a capital city, not even close, it's a regional centre. Those "holes in the ground" provide very comfortable living indeed. It seems the author is just a
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He didn't need to say "MacBook" at all, he could have just said "laptop." He wouldn't have said "the light from my HP Spectre" in the same way. At least not without being shouted down as a complete sellout. Unless that's what he meant by "obnoxious."
Get used to it. (Score:1)
Underground houses are cooler (Score:3)
Which is important there. They also have plenty of mining equipment on hand to dig the holes. They still cost more than an above ground house. But in the heat, you want to be down. Most are dug into the side of a hill.
Cooper Pedy is a wild, unruly place. Lots of people living on the edge trying to strike it rich by finding that one rich seam of opal. Many small mines owner operated. Everybody secretive about what they find. You do not want to be too curious wondering around the mine sites or you might end up joining the many bodies thought to be buried under various shafts.
Worth a visit.
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It definitely is. If for no other reason than the novelty of the sign on the way in: "Caution, don't run, deep holes, don't walk backwards"
Stop, please, my sides can only take so much (Score:2)
> the government mandates that NBN provides equal internet access to all Australians
It would appear the author somehow slipped into an almost-parallel dimension and has been to the other Australia.
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You mean the one next to Germany?
Tatooine (Score:2)
"That means no fridge running all day and night." That's why Uncle Owen told Luke he's shutting down the power for the night. Including the refr. Although Aunt Buru does use an electric food processor.
Elan Musk and pocket change (Score:1)
Next town over (Score:1)
the next town over, but that just happens to be 400 miles away
get the [nonperishable food] from town every day
I had to re-read the article at first, thinking it was saying they were 400 miles out of town, and went 400 miles for food every day. And finally realized "Oh, THEIR TOWN is 400 miles away from the next town." Something about this writer's article made me feel like these were just random rovers living in holes I guess. I especially like that the writer complains about his eyes never adjusting to the darkness while at the same time talking about using assumably full brightness on his Macbook.