South Australia · Attraction
Faye's Underground Home
Dugout dug by three women
schedule 1 min read / Updated Jun 2026
Faye's Underground Home is one of the most personal stories in Coober Pedy. Beginning in 1962, three women, Faye Nayler, Ettie Hall and Sue Bernard, hand-excavated an entire home using picks and shovels over the course of a decade. The finished dugout includes the first in-ground swimming pool ever built in Coober Pedy, a wine cellar, a fireplace and a fully furnished kitchen, all preserved as a working museum and open for guided tours.
The tour starts in the opal cave shop on the main street, where tickets are purchased, and moves underground into rooms that still feel like the 1960s and 1970s, with period furniture, ceramics and personal items left in place. Guides explain how the women planned and executed the excavation room by room, deepening and widening the home as their ambitions grew. The project took ten years and resulted in one of the largest private dugouts in the district.
The indoor swimming pool, a small but remarkable feat given the effort of excavating a pool-sized cavity by hand, is the centrepiece of the tour. Faye Nayler lived in the home until late in her life and opened it to visitors herself. The current custodians have maintained the atmosphere of a lived-in home rather than a formal museum, which gives the experience an intimacy that larger attractions lack.
The tour runs for approximately 30 to 45 minutes and also includes a visit to an adjacent underground mine and an opal cutting demonstration. Children are admitted free.
Scenic views
Lookouts near Faye's Underground Home.
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