Mining opal today still has all the aspects of a Wild West town from 1800s United States. Most of the Australian opal is found in the country’s remote deserts, which has a “blistering, almost unliveable climate.” Indeed, many opal miners dig their living quarters underground, in an attempt to stay cool.
Lightning Ridge, on the other hand, is significantly cooler, and there’;s enough moisture to support tree growth (albeit, scrub trees).
However, there’s till not a lot of water, so what the miners do is form “wash cooperatives.” Since it’s easier to find opal when its wet, all the dirt and gravel dug out of a mine is driven to one od many dam sites. There, the material is dumped into an agitator. The dirt is tumbled around for 4 to 5 hours, sprayrf with water, so that most of the gravel pours out of the sides of the agitator. The rest of the material slides down into an area where the miners look it over, inspecting each piece by hand.
The residue, the grit and gravel, is dumped into “mullock heaps” near the top of the dam.
The first rule of opal mining is to dig near someone who has already found opal. Miners in Australia work multiple claims.
Loose opals on the surface, called floaters, are rarely found these days. After a hundred years of miners looking for opal, they’ve all been found!
Today, miners search for “slips” vertical opens in the ground that let ground water seep into the earth. They use dousing to find these slips.
Open cast, also known as surface mining, finds opals at a shallow level. Boulder opal miners in Queensland dig for the shallow levels, for example. At Mintabie, miners use bulldozers to dig swathers 100 feet deep.
However, underground mining is the norm at Lightning Ridge, Coober Pedy, and Andamooka, which have seam opal.
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!
In 1921, the Mintabie opal field was found. Opal historian Fred Ward calls it “strangely beautiful…with its full range of black dark and light opal.
Andamooka, the last major opal field to be found, was open in 1930.
Mintabie, Coober Pedy and Andamooka opal fields are located in South Australia. Lightning Ridge and White Cliffs opal fiels are found in New South Wales, and in Queensland, there are the Opalton, Quilpie, Koroit and Yowah fields.
