Inside the world of Australian opal miners who live underground

Photographer Tamara Merino and her boyfriend were driving through the desert in Australia in November 2015 when they started to see a few odd signs: “Underground bar,” then “underground restaurant.” After they got a flat tire, they found an underground church — empty, but lit by a few flickering candles. They had stumbled into the city of Coober Pedy, a partly subterranean community and the opal capital of the world. The town’s name comes from the Aboriginal phrase “kupa piti,” or, roughly, “white man’s hole.”
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