Starry, Starry Night

In 1987, I accompanied my NBC colleagues to Australia for a week of TODAY programs profiling that country and its people. One of my stories focused on a bizarre town in the south-central outback called Coober Pedy.

The community of around 4,000 was in the middle of nowhere, necessitating a long ride in a single engine, four-seater prop plane. There wasn’t an airport where we were headed, just a long, dirt landing strip on the edge of town.

Coober Pedy has no trees, no grass, no body of water, and no reason for existence except for one precious commodity lying beneath its scorched brown surface.

Opal.

Once the rare gem was discovered, fortune seekers descended - literally - first with picks and shovels, then with dynamite and small, earth-chewing machines. Opal is fickle, its veins running in erratic patterns, too unpredictable for big mining operations, but alluring enough for individual dreamers hoping to strike it rich.

So they blasted and dug in the desert heat, discovering along the way that the subterranean air temperature remained a constant 72 degrees (give or take a few) through summer and winter.

Ideal conditions…for a home.

Cue the real estate boom.

One after another, miners and their families turned the opal tunnels and shafts into residences, complete with kitchens, dens, bedrooms and baths.

Before long, a majority of Coober Pedy’s residents were living like mole people - and we were there to document them, staying in a small motel, also underground.

One night after filming, the camera crew and I rustled up some reclining lawn chairs, bought a six pack of Australian beer, and parked ourselves behind the motel to gaze at a star show the likes of which we had never seen.

With no light pollution to speak of, and no buildings or trees to block our view, the dome of stars and planets seemed close enough to touch. This is what every living creature saw on every cloudless night until the invention of electricity. Now we don’t even think of looking up when the sun goes down.

What are we missing when we don’t know what we are missing?

Almost thirty years later, yearning for another chance to see the night sky in all its brilliant glory, we ventured out to one of the few dark spots left on the American continent - southern Utah and eastern Nevada.

On three successive nights, we filmed the glorious spectacle above us using a special lens and time-lapse technology.

The resulting documentary, entitled Awe was shot in June of 2015 and aired on Chicago public television. This is a ten minute “making of” piece depicting what we saw and how it blew our minds.

“The Night Sky”

(Runs 9:53)

For paying subscribers, my 1987 TODAY piece about Coober Pedy. (We didn’t film our experience with the Australian night sky because video technology at the time was primitive.)

Story below.

Coober Pedy - aired 2/6/87

(Runs 4:45)