White Cliffs

Fast facts

• Eccentric opal mining town with houses and a hotel built underground
• 1,051 km west of Sydney, 287 km north east of Broken Hill
  

Why go there

White Cliffs is an extraordinary opal town where most of the inhabitants live in underground dwellings called ‘dugouts’. It makes perfect sense, because regardless of the Outback heat, dugouts enjoy a constant 22°C temperature all year round. As well as being dry and well ventilated, you never have to use a heater or an air-conditioner.

You can stay below ground yourself in the fabulous Underground Motel or PJ’s Underground Bed and Breakfast. Visit a museum, art and photographic galleries – all underground.

The countryside looks like a moonscape, pimpled with bone-white heaps of gritty clay dug from the 50,000 mine shafts that surround the town. Hobby miners still dig for opals and visitors can fossick through heaps of old mine tailings in a bid to find opal left behind by the original miners.

Mining for white opal began here in 1889, with the most unusual find an opalised plesiosaur dinosaur unearthed in 1976. For many years the dinosaur was on display in the town but it’s now at the Australian Museum in Sydney.

Don’t miss

Watching a local opal cutter turn lumps of stone into precious jewellery, and the chance to buy your opals direct from the source.

A walk through the old opal fields with its craters, hillocks and flat plains stretching far into the distance, but remember the main rule out here – don’t walk backwards.

The town’s art galleries, including Barbara Gasch’s Outback Treasures, which features jewellery made by dipping insects, leaves and seed cases in silver.