Not just churches

Merv's waiting here for us

Let's have a look what's inside

Hi Merv

This is a normal home here in Coober Pedy

it's called a 'Dugout'

Dug+out means 'To dig the earth out'

5 meters deep!

He said that the first room in every house has to be the kitchen

It's not just because they like eating

They're smart

The reason why the kitchen has to be the first room in the house

is so that the cooking smells can ventilate out easily

If they made it too far in, it would make ventilation more difficult

This is about 5 metres. You can see how deep down we are.

The next room is a bedroom

But Merv's using it as a storage room

They've painted it white here

You can see that they've painted it white here

It seals the rock

So that the dust doesn't fall down

It's beautiful

This is his office in here and it's fully equipped with ADSL internet

So you can use the internet and get your work done

just like any other office

This hole was the original entrance to the house

This home was built 70 years ago

In the olden days, they didn't have a front door like we have now

They needed to descend down this hole in order to get into the living room

Normally if we're taking a tour of someone's home, we'll progressively move upstairs right?

But that's not the case here. Here we need to go further down.

This part is the original part

But around 20 years ago, they decided that they wanted to make some extensions

Where could they extend to?

They brought a machine in and extended down here

Up top was hand done

Down there was done with a machine

Let's take a look

This is the extension

They used a machine here

This is the library

He said that suppose you thought it was time to have another baby

You don't need to worry about whether or not you'll have enough space

All you have to do if you're planning on a new member in the family

Is to bring a jack-hammer home

And you can make a brand new room

It will only take one or two days

Furniture shops would go bankrupt here

You don't even need to buy furniture

If you want to make a new TV shelf or bookshelf

You just bring a jack-hammer in and there you have it

In order to bring the machine in here, it needed to pass through this entrance

It's a big opening

They would bring the machine in this way and gradually knock the stone away

When it's closed like this, you honestly don't know whether or not it's day or night

You can just close it up like this and you're laughing

He said that Coober Pedy is scorching hot

it reaches 50 deg Celsius outside

But inside, all year round whether outside is hot or cold

inside here, it will be a constant 24 degrees

night time, morning, evening or the middle of the day

It stays at a constant 24 degrees

The best thing is is that there are no neighbours!

It's so quiet

But if you wanted to make a loud noise, you can

Noone will be screaming at you to turn it down

You can hold a party or Karaoke

No-one is going to yell at you

This is really Neua Chan Phan Plaek

I'm really impressed

Could you live there?

It would be an interesting experience

If it was just for a short time

But it looked kind of lonely didn't it?

He told me that there are around 200,000 tourists that visit Coober Pedy each year

It's a tourist spot now?

The tourism industry does more for their economy than mining now

The revenue that stimulates the economy mainly comes from tourism now

And there are also many countries that go there to shoot movies

Our guide Merv used to be in the film industry and often found himself going back and forth between Coober Pedy

He began to take a real liking to Coober Pedy

and finally decided that he'd be better of just packing up and moving there

The guy just now right? The owner of the house we saw?

He wasn't a native from there?

He's actually a New Zealander

Oh

But he had traveled there so many times

he ended up moving there and buying a house

Talkng about being lonely

I asked him, because I was also curious

He told me that the ratio of men to women that live there

is around 1 woman to 50 guys

Ok, I'm not going anymore. It's better for me to stay here!

- But.. - Here in Thailand it's around 1 guy to 4 girls

There are around 200,000 tourists

The majority of those are female

Ok, I'm going again now

So there's a balance there

- They have everything there right? - Yes, everything

He said, yeah... sometimes you get a little lonely

But not THAT lonely

Because there's a big turnover of people with the tourism and all

Is there a hospital there?

Yes

So you could say that it's a fully functional city

Yes, it has everything

And they have restaurants with food from all around the world

We met Philippinos and even a Thai lady

Did you meet any Thais?

Yes, we met a Thai lady

She was really excited to see us

And she can even get Channel 5 there

Wow! In that case, we have to say a special hi to you down there

Hi to all the Thai viewers in Coober Pedy

- They receive it via satellite - Down there in Australia

Jay's been there already

I want to go too!

Today we've heard a really Neua Chan Phan Plaek story

From Australia

Thank you very much Jay For this weeks story