New South Wales

Whites Cliffs

A town that went underground to beat the heat, and never came back up

Summer here regularly tops 40 degrees, so from the 1880s on, White Cliffs miners simply dug sideways instead of building up. Stay a night in an underground hotel, or tour a dugout home that holds a steady temperature year-round with no air conditioning. Above ground, walk the old mining fields where opal still turns up in the tailings. See Australia's first solar power station, mirrored dishes built here in the 1980s. Half the town lives below the surface. All of it looks like nowhere else.