Andamooka, South Australia
Andamooka | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
View of the Andamooka town centre in South Australia, seen from One Tree Hill | |||||||||||||
Andamooka | |||||||||||||
| Coordinates: 30°26′55″S 137°09′54″E / 30.448524°S 137.165126°E | |||||||||||||
| Country | Australia | ||||||||||||
| State | South Australia | ||||||||||||
| Region | Far North | ||||||||||||
| LGA | |||||||||||||
| Location |
| ||||||||||||
| Established | 1930s (mining settlement) 16 December 1976 (Government Town) 8 February 2001 (locality) | ||||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||||
| • State electorate | |||||||||||||
| • Federal division | |||||||||||||
| Elevation | 76 m (249 ft) | ||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||
| • Total | 262 (2021 census) | ||||||||||||
| Postcode | 5722 | ||||||||||||
| Mean max temp | 27.5 °C (81.5 °F) | ||||||||||||
| Mean min temp | 13.7 °C (56.7 °F) | ||||||||||||
| Annual rainfall | 160 mm (6.3 in) | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Adjoining localities | |||||||||||||
Andamooka is a remote opal-mining town approximately 600 kilometres (370mi) north of Adelaide in the Far North of South Australia on the traditional lands of the Kokatha people. Opal was discovered in 1930, leading to the development of the Andamooka Opal Field, one of Australia's historic opal-producing regions .
The town is administered by the Outback Communities Authority rather than by local government area, and lies within the state electoral district of Giles and the federal Division of Grey. The surrounding opal fields have also produced notable opalised fossils dating to the Early Cretaceous period, reflecting the region's geological history within the ancient Eromanga Sea.
In recent years, the area has developed a small astronomy tourism sector associated with the Andamooka Observatory and nearby Observatory at Woomera, supported by the region's dark skies and low levels of light pollution.
Many early miners built semi-dugout houses into the surrounding hillsides to provide insulation from the extreme desert climate.
Andamooka is noted for several distinctive characteristics, including historic opal mining, semi-dugout housing built into surrounding hillsides, and astronomy tourism associated with the region’s dark night skies.