Boot Hill Cemetery

Coober Pedy’s main cemetery — known to everyone as Boot Hill — is a surprisingly affecting stop. The headstones read like a roll-call of the town’s roughly 35 nationalities, in scripts and languages from across Europe and beyond, a reminder that people came from all over the world to chase opal and made their lives (and ends) here.

Its most famous resident is Karl Bratz, a miner whose headstone is a welded beer keg inscribed “have a drink on me” — pure Coober Pedy humour, and a favourite photo. The Coober Pedy Historical Society maintains a section-by-section directory if you’re researching a name. Visit respectfully — it’s an active cemetery.

For the town’s earliest burials, see the historic First Cemetery.