Digging shafts in the hot Australian interior may not have been everyone’s cup of tea in 1926, especially if the only other people around were a collection of scruffy, rough and weather-beaten men. But from the moment she drove into Coober Pedy with her 16-year-old brother, Victor, Alice Minnie Florence Davies-Berrington (who went by Minnie Berrington) was spellbound. She would later write: ‘It was pure magic. A golden light suffused everything. The air was so clear it seemed to sparkle … The sand was a lovely shade of rose. The enchantment of that golden serenity was so complete that I knew I would never willingly live in a city again.’
But how did this
