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!