I visited Australia's most surreal outback town - no grass but plenty of opals

As we set out to discover the pale orange moonscape of Coober Pedy, our guide Bev keeps repeating one thing: "That is a true story." It's a necessary qualifier for this desert settlement, famous for opals, natural rock formations and underground homes, which is so unlike anywhere else, it feels like another planet. Take the golf course, with its "Keep Off Grass" sign. At the edge of a town miles from anywhere, surrounded by discarded rocks from opal mines piled in sandy heaps, there is no grass. But the sign shows residents know what they've got is funny. To play golf in Coober Pedy, you need to carry a piece of artificial turf to tee off.

Despite lacking a quintessential ingredient for most golf courses, Coober Pedy's is the only one in the world with reciprocal rights for members to play at the "home of golf", St Andrews in Scotland.

"That is a true story," Bev says again when we drive in for a game. "I'm pretty sure it was just so unique that St Andrews couldn't really pass it up. And maybe a few opals might've crossed palms as well."

From the moment you approach Coober Pedy - where airflow pipes are the only clue there are people living under rocky hills - you know you've arrived at a place where the truth is stranger than fiction.

It's the first overnight stop for me and my mum, on a whirlwind outback AAT Kings coach trip, which takes us from the heart of the desert - Uluru - to the city of Adelaide. Neither of us has ever travelled to the outback, and our four-day taster is an education. We start our tour a day early, flying to Uluru to watch a fluorescent sunset over the rock. It's a bucket-list experience and makes us hungry to return to explore more. The next morning, we're up in the freezing dark, desert stars still twinkling, so we can grab a coffee and hop on our coach to start the drive. This is a new itinerary for AAT Kings, and our fellow travellers are couples, siblings, friends, solo travellers, and a mother and son all keen to see the outback between Uluru and Adelaide.

We start winding through the cattle stations the size of European countries that span the middle of Australia. Our driver guide, Jim, is a fount of knowledge, and tells us stories about the owners of the cattle stations, Aboriginal land rights and survival in the desert. As we turn onto the Stuart Highway to head south, we hit "traffic". There are huge road trains, carrying cattle and a bunch of campervans, and Jim uses a two-way radio to make friendly exchanges with other drivers who let us pass.

Eventually the bus pulls up at sunset in Coober Pedy, at a comfortable and simple motel, the Mud Hut. I'm a little disappointed we don't get to stay underground. But when we actually go underground the next morning - and experience the eerie stillness inside the houses made inside hollowed out rock, which don't have any supports holding them up - I think I might be more like Bev. "I don't live underground," she says. "I need air and light."

Our day starts with a drive to the Kanku-Breakaways, also known as the "moon plain", where rocky hills look like they have broken away from the Stuart Range. Heading back into town, the piles of rock made by opal mines mimic these natural formations.

Bev explains the unusual, egalitarian system for opal mining. Anyone can get a permit, for about $130, and stake a claim to start mining. But like lots of things in Coober Pedy, it's risky, as your chosen plot may contain nothing at all, and all you can do to find out is start digging. And if you start just slightly to the left or right of where the opal seams are, you may never find them.

If you're a tourist, you can also "noodle" which means sifting through the discarded heaps of "mullock".

There's a huge noodling pile in town, and some locals make a living this way. Bev says only recently a little girl on holidays found an opal worth $1000. "That is a true story," she adds. We go into a working mine, tour the Umoona Museum, explore an underground home, and peruse and buy opals, which range from $10 chips to $60,000 pieces of jewellery. While we're standing in an underground living room, Bev tells us opal mining is now banned within Coober Pedy's town limits, to stop dangerous blasting and unstable ground.

But, turns out extending your underground house is not.

There's a retired couple who live in a house with eight bathrooms. They weren't mining and just happened to have found plenty of opals when they were renovating their house. True story.

After two nights in Coober Pedy, our road trip continues with a night in Port Augusta, where the desert meets the ocean at the top of the Spencer Gulf. On our final day driving, the landscapes start to change, back to the familiar Australian bush and grassy paddocks of agricultural land.

We stop in Clare, to taste wines flavoured by mineral-rich soil, and then, just like that, we're back in the city.

Walking under the twinkling lights strung up over Adelaide's Rundle Street after dinner, Mum and I agree that we feel a little like we've been pulled backwards through space and time.

We didn't get any opals, but we do have a lot of laughs, and a new appreciation for the vastness of the Australian landscape and the resourcefulness of the humans who have lived there. And there is a sheen of red dust clinging to our shoes. True story.

The writer was a guest of AAT Kings