Deep in the South Australian outback, there lies a town where some fifty percent of its people live underground. The reason? It’s not due to some nuclear catastrophe or a mass case of agoraphobia. Rather, intense summer heat—and winter cold—is what led most of its approximately 2,000 inhabitants to carve out a subterranean home.
A curious sequence of events led to the birth of this otherworldly-looking place. It all started just over a century ago when in 1915, a band of three men were unsuccessfully prospecting for gold south of Coober Pedy. With them was 14-year-old Will Hutchinson, son of one of the men, Jim Hutchinson….