Coober Pedy in outback South Australia is a very strange place and that strangeness begins in the desert landscape well before you arrive.

Like some alien landscape the white and brown cones of unearthed soil, the dumped mullock heaps of opal mining, dot the landscape.

Each little mound tells of an abandoned search into the parched earth for opal. The larger mounds tell of more promising but ultimately abandoned mines as well.

This bizzare lanscape extends for tens of kilometers around Coober Pedy and gives this place uniqueness all its own.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Mullock Landscape’, 1/1000s f/6.3 ISO100 125mm