The surface temperature hits 48.6°C in summer. The air shimmers. Metal burns skin on contact. But walk through the doors of the White Cliffs Underground Motel in White Cliffs, New South Wales and the heat vanishes. Not because of air conditioning. Because you’ve just descended into an underground hotel…
The Hotel Carved Into A Mesa Hill
The White Cliffs Underground Motel wasn’t built. It was excavated. Carved by hand into Poor Man’s Hill—a mesa named for its lack of opal—the motel features 44 underground rooms hollowed directly from 100-million-year-old sandstone.
You descend below the desert surface into a labyrinth of corridors and chambers where the stone around you maintains a pleasant 20-22°C permanently. When the outback above bakes at record temperatures, you’re sleeping in geological air conditioning that never switches off.
What It’s Actually Like Inside…
Bizarre But True! The White Cliffs Underground Motel operates as the world’s largest underground motel, a vast subterranean complex lovingly constructed almost entirely by hand in the 1980s.
You walk off scorched ground down a carved stairway into the side of a 65-million-year-old rock formation. Each of the 44 rooms is laid out differently – some with double beds, some with two or up to four separate beds. No radio signal (obviously!) No mobile phone coverage or televisions either. The underground environment strips away all modern ‘distractions’, leaving only the tranquil ambience of subterranean living.
Shared bathroom facilities sit along the complex’s perimeter and air shafts ensure proper ventilation, preventing musty air whilst maintaining even warmth throughout the year.
Why White Cliffs Lives Underground
The town of White Cliffs exists because opal was discovered here in 1889 by kangaroo hunters. By the 1920s, it had a population of over 3,000. The town was Australia’s first opal mining settlement, producing fine quality seam opal in volumes the world had never seen.
The summer temperatures (typically over 40°C) forced miners underground as early as 1894. The sandstone was remarkably stable (no one has ever died from a mine collapse in White Cliffs) and relatively easy to dig. Miners started converting old mine shafts into homes, burrowing into hills to find opals and escape the heat.
Today, White Cliffs has a population of around 156, with many residents still living in underground dugouts. The White Cliffs Underground Motel sits nestled into this landscape as one of only three dugout-style hotels in Australia and the largest in the world.
Beyond The Motel
The motel features a licensed restaurant, café and bar – all underground or carved into the hillside. There’s a telescope on top of the hotel where you can observe the outback’s spectacular night sky. When temperatures drop in the evening, staff light a campfire for cosy evening gatherings.
White Cliffs is also home to Australia’s first solar power station, built in 1981. The town offers opal mine tours, underground homes to explore and a landscape that appears more like a moonscape from the air, formed by an estimated 50,000 disused diggings!
The motel’s mini museum exhibits Aboriginal artworks and artefacts telling the fascinating story of this remote outback town.
Book Your Room Down Under (Literally!)
You can read about underground living. Or you can just try it for yourself..!
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PRICE : ★★☆☆☆
WOW FACTOR : ★★★☆☆
BIZARRENESS : ★★★★☆
