There's a town in the State of South Australia called Coober Pedy.
It's in the middle of nowhere, desert setting, and a lot of people live in underground dwellings to have a home that has a cooler environment than the blazing heat outside.
Being a mining town (opals), I guess it was just as easy for the miners to dig out their home, as dig their mine shafts and tunnels.
From what people have told me, quite a number of people who want to be left alone like hermits, find themselves in this town and as a result of this, and the desert surroundings, there's some real strange atmosphere to the place. I also believe it has some landscape just out of town that looks a lot like the moon's surface, it's that desolate.