In the remote opal mining town of White Cliffs in the Australian Outback, residents are carving homes and businesses underground, with newcomers drawn from the cities to life beneath the desert clay.
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Audio Script:
It’s not what you see above the ground that really matters here in White Cliffs, an opal mining town in the remote northwest corner of New South Wales. The real action is happening beneath my feet, in the homes and businesses that have been hollowed out of the clay below.
Hello, I’m Nicky Redl, and I have been invited to one of those dugouts by Richard Allen. He is a new recruit to White Cliffs, moving from Melbourne just four months ago.
RICHARD ALLEN: I’d visited White Cliffs a couple of times on motorbike trips further inland, areas in south and southwest Queensland. And I had a friend from East Gippsland that actually had a dugout here.
And I actually came to stay a week with my daughters, and started to fall in love with the place, and started to realize that it actually had panoramas and play of light that just didn’t occur in Melbourne, or Victoria, or even in eastern Victoria in the mountains. It’s quite unique and captivating… (continues)
Broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Rural Reporter on May 9, 2009.