patrick.net

#cooberpeddy I always promise you out-of-the-way stories that major media outlets miss or take little note of. This story starts in 1975 in Rio de Janeiro. One Saturday I took a tour of the major diamond processing facility of H. Stern and Company. My Brasilian readers will know this company well. It was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1945 by a German-Jewish (perhaps Holocaust survivor) named Hans Stern. Here is a full report on this class jeweler:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.Stern
What caught my attention on the tour was the jade and opal jewelry that they sell. At that time, I was not curious enough to research where opals and jade come from.
Last night, I discovered that a lot of opals come from the South Australian desert known as the Nullabor Plain. I have made 4 trips across this desert and know it well. In the summertime, it becomes an inferno with daily temperatures reaching 122 degrees Fahrenheit plus. It would not be a peasant place for miners and their families to live. The largest deposits of opals rest under this most inhospitable place. We have the South Australian town of Coober Pedy where miners and their families live. Here is a great story on the town:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/travel/coober-pedy-australia.html

If you translate the name of this town back into the language of the Nungaar aboriginal tribe it means: "White men living underground."
This is a most ingenious town with comfortable quarters for miners, a swimming pool, and shops all underground. We hear stories of how colonists would live on the moon and Mars underground. These hardy souls are already doing it here on earth. It is also a blueprint for a way that people could survive as temperatures go up due to global warming here on earth.