Elsewhere

A small community finds home underground in the Australian Outback

“This place is not for everyone. Some people come here and all they see is a dust bowl, others find a home. It also depends on how alone you can be, how much silence you can handle”.

White Cliffs is a tiny community nestled in the heart of the Australian Outback, 1000km inland from Sydney and a three-hour drive from the nearest town. Here, because of the extreme summer temperatures and the scarcity of building materials, most of the 200 residents live underground, in caves dug in the hillside. Many of these dugouts are old abandoned opal mines, sometimes expanded and converted to make them habitable.

In a place to all appearances unsuitable for human habitation, this small group of people found a home. When questioned about their decision to live in White Cliffs, many mention the slow and tranquil pace of life, the sense of freedom or the lower cost of living. But this lifestyle also comes with harduous demands: carving your house in the rock, travelling 600km for groceries, learning to live in harmony with the rhythm of the desert and embracing the cycles of nature, including droughts, floods and 45 degrees heat.

The existence of this community serves as a reminder that - despite the global trend towards globalization - alternative ways of living are possible, and serves as a testament to human resilience, the power of adaptation, and the capacity to find beauty and meaning in one of the most remote corners of the Earth.

The series ‘Elsewhere’ explores how locals experience their symbiotic relationship with the land, cultivate a sense of self-identity, and find a sense of belonging and purpose amidst solitude and isolation.