When opal miners have to work underground in search of seam opal(those mines at Lightning Ridge, Coober Pedy and Andamooka) a miner will stake his (or her) claim, secure the funding needed to purchase the appropriate equipment, and then sink a shaft some 40 feet down. With this shaft as a base, they will then tunnel horizontally outward in search of opal.
Until the 1970s, the miners would tunnel outward using hand tools. Nowadays an auger is used. An auger is a giant drill which can bore a circular tunnel in a matter of hours.
One the tunnels have been made, various equipment is lowered down, depending on how much funds the miner has. Black opal mines typically use quite a bit of expensive equipment, as black opal is the most lucrative opal to mine.
Claims are granted in either 50- or 100-meter lengths. Miners typically have not kept accurate maps of their tunnels, and on occasion heavy earth movers moving topside have actually fallen into tunnels below!
Opal mining, therefore, is a dangerous business, for a variety of reasons.
Charlie Nettleton spent the rest of the year (1903) walking from Lightning Ridge to White Cliffs. There, he showed his finds to T. C. Wollaston, who was a famous opal merchant.
Wollaston purchased the bag of black opal – not for a great deal of money – and placed a standing order with Nettleton for more. This was the transaction that put Lightning Ridge on the map, and today, it is perhaps the most important opal field in the world.
In 2000, author Fred Ward described life at Lightning Ridge as “raw…a hideaway for loners, a place for getting lost. Folks go by their first names, keep no records, and guard information. Opal is an all-cash business.”
Nine years later, the situation has not changed much. Opal mining in Australia still has pretty much of a “Wild West” flavor about it.
Black opal is the most expensive of all opal varieties, because it is the most rare. In the early 2000s, most black opal was purchased by buyers from Asia…very few were sold in the United States. Of course, now that auction sites offer opal to anyone around the world, that is changing.
In the late 1800s and very early 1900s, the only opal; mining in Australia was at White Cliffs, which was a light opal mine. However, around 1900, black opal was discovered in Lightning Ridge, 800 km southwest. (Lightning Ridge an area about 700 km northwest of Sydney, on the northern border of New South Wales.) At the time, it was grazing land.
The actual discoverer was a miner named Charlie Nettleton. The mine at the Cliffs was playing out, so he went walking…and walking….in search of gold rather than opal.
He stopped in Lightning Ridge and camped with the Ryan family. They were opal miners, who had discovered black opal….which was unlike anything else he’d ever seen. He sank an opal shaft in 1902, with no luck. In 1903, he shifted camp closer to where seven other men were digging. Here, in early 1903, he found opal. He sent a parcel of his findings to a gem dealer in Sydney, who rejected it, calling it a “worthless form of matrix.”
To be continued!
