Faye hand-carved an underground cave to live, her home is now a museum

While it can be a challenge to regulate a home's temperature, many people in this remote Australian town live comfortably year-round in underground dugouts.

Faye's Underground Home is an example of such a property in Coober Pedy, located more than 800km north of Adelaide and famous for opal mining.

The home's current owners, Lorraine and Dieter Sternberg, have turned it into a visitor's experience and tribute to the woman who developed it, the late Faye Nayler.

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"What Faye put into that home back in the early years was incredible; it was far beyond some of our thinking and what she created there," Mrs Sternberg said.

According to the Coober Pedy tourism website, it's estimated that about half the town's population lives underground.

The dugouts are generally built into the side of a hill rather than beneath the surface, with the soil stable enough to hold rooms with wide ceilings.

Coober Pedy Historical Society secretary Jenny Davison told The Senior, miners started building dugouts at the same time opals were discovered in the town in 1915 due to a lack of building materials, the town's remoteness, and the extremes in temperature.

Mr and Mrs Sternberg, of Adelaide, lived in Coober Pedy from the mid-1970s until 2015, and own the Opal Cave, which Ms Nayler started.

"Living underground is the best way to live," Mrs Sternberg said.

"The temperatures stay a constant 24 degrees all year round; you don't really need air conditioners or heaters."

Faye's Underground Home was a small mail truck workshop when Ms Nayler bought it in the early 1960s. But she and two friends, Ettie Hall and Sue Bernard, turned it into the home it is today, using nothing but picks and shovels as they searched for opals at the same time.

Over about 10 years, the women built the kitchen, three bedrooms with walk-in robes, two lounge rooms, a billiard room, a (rarely used) fireplace, a bar and an indoor pool.

Ms Nayler also built a non-working mine alongside it for tourists to explore and get the feel of being underground.

Ms Nayler had a pioneering spirit; sensing the interest from visitors after opal mining boomed in the 1960s, she worked with bus companies to help run mine and town tours, plus started the Opal Cave underground accommodation and tourism business.

Mrs Sternberg managed the Opal Cave for Ms Nayler in the late 1970s before she and Dieter bought it from her in 1982.

While Ms Nayler only lived in that dugout for a few years before creating another one and taking on other adventures, Mrs Sternberg named it in her honour to preserve her legacy.

"She was a jack of all trades and mastered them all," Mrs Sternberg said.

"She was a very strong person, but she was strong in the nicest of ways."

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