The setout of this town is very peculiar , having 2 sides, with a kind of "no mans land" in the middle - perhaps it is a flood plain when they get rain. The centre area of the photo is the town itself, which consists of a pub, general store, a small health service, a small museum, a few opal shops (usually a part of people's homes), church, school, police station, caravan park, pool & houses. The top section of photo is the other side of town, that basically consists of dugout houses & opal mines. From the other side of town looking back to where Im standing, looks pretty much the same, with dugout houses & mines.
By 1890 the settlement grew to be named White Cliffs, the name derived from the surrounding countryside with the white underlying sandstone outcrops along the escarpments of the hills contrasting from the rusty red topsoil typical of this area.
Most of the sandstone outcrop is what has been mined and the remnants that remain are what you can see in the distance, on the other side of town.
