Heritage
A Town of Many Nations
How a tiny, brutally hot speck of desert came to be one of the most multicultural towns in Australia — drawn together, and divided, by opal.
- Attractions
Boot Hill Cemetery
Coober Pedy's main cemetery — a moving, very Coober Pedy place where miners of dozens of nationalities lie, including the famous beer-can headstone.
- Attractions
Coober Pedy First Cemetery
The town's original burial ground, used from the early 1920s — the resting place of some of the very first people to live and die on the opal fields.
Mintabie: The Opal Town That Closed
Once a rough, rich opal field north of Coober Pedy, Mintabie was wound up and handed back to the APY Lands in 2019 — and is now closed to the public.
The Water Story: Surviving in a Town With No Rain
In one of the driest places in Australia, every drop is hard-won — from carted water and bores to a desalination plant, and now a 2026 handover to SA Water.
What Does 'Coober Pedy' Mean? The Contested Name
The name is usually traced to the Aboriginal 'kupa piti' — but what it actually means, and even which language it's from, is far from settled.