About Mining for Opals in Outback Australia, Coober Pedy, Part-4

Again Pat is on the pick, but this photos is to show you and bring your attention to what she is pulling the dirt into, it is called a Telescope and made of metal and it is inside a 8 inch inside diameter plastic pipe, as we move forward pulling the dirt this Telescope is also pulled forward and kept up to the shot and as I said the dirt slides down easy so at this point it is not hard work, quite easy in fact, that is why Pat is having a go, and when the Telescope reached the end of the pipe then I push it back in and take the Pipe and Telescope off and add a anther length of pipe on then put this Telescope and it its pipe back on and continue inching forward until all of the dirt is gone.

On the side wall is a blue light which is called a Black Light, Opal fluoresces under this light, so anything that I may have missed with my eyes or just cannot see because of the white Alinite, I will turn off the hand light which is also hanging on the side wall, on this I have put a inline switch on it so it is easy to switch on and off in the dark, with this Black Light we miss nothing at all, even use it when pulling the dirt sometimes and in the early days for the first 2 and a half years I did not use one of these lights and I did lose quite a bit of opal, as I have had a Noodler go through the dirt that I pushed in a small gulley and he got quite a bit of opal from it and I did not get any of this, but I did all the work, so now I make sure the best I can that I do not loose any opal.

This is what we call a Tumbler, this is what we clean our opal with there, there is no standard size for one of these, you can have one made at a workshop called Ross Chatfield's, here in Coober Pedy to what ever size you require in diameter and length, but it is a piece of equipment that we cannot do without, just about all in this town that do mining use one of these and it would normally have a galvanized metal tub for holding the water, some have a half of a 44 gallon drum, I made this one myself at Ross's workshop around 1993 or 4 and as I am a fisherman I had a couple of spare plastic boxes we use to put the fish in when we caught them, so I built this tumbler to take this box which will never rust out like the metal ones do and this photo was taken today, November 13th 2006, it has lasted this long, eventually the metal basket tumbler will need to be replaced, it is made from stainless steel but that does not last for ever.

What I do is to put the opal as I have dug it out of the face and all of the extra dirt that comes with it into the basket and then put the cover on with 2 wing nuts and then put it in the tumbler which revolves around 50 revolutions a minute, making sure it is filled with water and leave it running for around 2 hours, depends on how much is in there and how clean the opal came out of the face, hen when it has finished I take the basket out and tip it into a container also wit some water in it to stop the opal from bouncing off the bottom when it is tipped in and then take it in the cutting room and sort out what I have got and throw out any potch, then it has to be classed.

That is to say it has to be put in grades, Tops, Seconds etc, until we get to the potch and color which is normally the biggest bag of the lot and the Tops is the Smallest, this depends on how big the pocket of opal is that I find, sometimes it is only a small pocket that is 1/2 ounce or 1 ounce in size, so that is how I sell it as I find it, no breaking down of the grades, we can have for 1 bag to 7 or 8 bags or Grades in a parcel of opal for sale, that I have to get a price put on it for me, as I do not find opal often enough and most times I am always finding different opal than the last time or time before anyway so it is better to get someone who sees a lot of opal all the time and they know the current price that this opal is worth at that time, then I will put it up for sale.

This is part of a parcel of opal that I have found over time, not enough that's for sure, but this as you see it is how it comes out of the tumbler and I have put it in water so you can see the colors present in it, it has not been touched in any other way and was sold like this.

This is how I take my photos of my opal when I put it up for sale on the web site in water so you can see the colors present as if it dries out the sides tend to become opaque and then you cannot see much of the color, so the water puts a shine on the outside so to speak and the colors stand out, nothing else is added as some people may think, just plain old water, but if you want to keep the opal in water for a long period of time, it is advised to put a drop of bleach in the water, this will stop a fungus from growing on it and turning the opal black and the water really stinks, if this has happed to you, just get rid of the old water and put fresh in with bleach and it will bet rid of the fungus and smell and them you change the water again and add a drop more bleach and keep it that way and out of the sunlight as sunlight destroys bleach.

This is my Front End Loader as it is called, I bought it in 96 and took me a while to save for it and I came upon it by chance, one day I found a small Noodler near me and I asked him if he could move a small dump from a shaft that I had just had drilled for me and he said yes, cost me a Carton of beer about $40,00 at the time which was dear, but beggars cannot be choosers and Loaders are hard to find to get a job done on the fields, if one is not working near you then you have trouble finding one that will come out to you and do the job and a lot wont even move dirt for you when they are next door to you, something to do with not getting paid etc, lot of that here, every time you can get someone to came and move a dump for you it is $100.00 minimum and sometimes I have had to wait a week for a loader to get to me.

I mentioned to the guy that I needed one of these to move my dumps as I had trouble in getting someone, most of the time and he said that he was leaving Coober Pedy and it was up for sale, he forgot to mention that this was his last job and he was finished after he had left me, so I went home and talked to Pat about it as what he wanted is just what I had saved up and did not really want to spend it all, so I went out the next morning and expected to see him in the same spot but he was gone, on my way home that day I spotted the noodling machine behind a dump, but across the main road and a long way form my claim, so I went around to see him, only to find the machine parked there and nobody working.

So I called there again the next and again there was nobody working this went on for the rest of the week, so on the Saturday morning I went there and left a note for him on the steering wheel to tell him I was interested in buying it and to give me a ring when he got the message, I then got a phone call on the Sunday saying that he had just brought the machine back to town, so I said that I would buy it from him and arranged to meet him at his fathers dugout where I paid him for it and we brought it back to my dug out I was living in at the time then I took him back home.

With this I can now move dirt when I want and over the next few years it will more than pay for itself, but thanks to my wife Pat as with out her help I would not have this or a lot of my equipment as she works and gives me money every week to go mining with and when I find some opal that also goes into the kitty and I buy things I need to make the job easier, so with out Pats help Financially I would not be able to mine as I am not finding enough opal to look after myself, a lot of miners here rely on there wife for Financially Support, the wife's are in fact the backbone of this community as with out there help a lot of us miners would not be mining.

Here is a large blowup of a Green/Blue skin shell, called green/blue because it has both colors present and the dominant color is green and you can also see why they are called skin shells, this one is a thick shin shell, we also have thin skin shells and they come in all colors, but mainly potch is found like all of our opal, out of all of the opal found here in Coober Pedy they estimate that 97 percent is potch or called Common Opal and of that 3 percent that is left for colored opal only a fraction of one percent is Gem Quality, so now you know why good opal is rare, not like diamonds which they find millions of every year and control the sale of to keep the price up, all diamonds are good for is for cutting and polish opal with.

This type of shell can be made into Doublets, due to the curved shape of the shell, most of us that cut would use Boulder Ironstone that comes from Queensland where they find the Boulder Opal, but this is just the plain ironstone that has not had any opal in it, so will cut the ironstone so it fits the curve on the inside of the shell, this method I do not like as it is impossible to match the inside of the shell exactly and the glue that they use will fill the gaps, this glue can expand and contract different to the opal and will at some point cause it to crack, I like to smash up the ironstone so I have some very small and some larger pieces then mix it with the glue, then using a different method to apply this mixture so it dries and matches the shape of the shell exactly and will not cause the opal to crack and then can be cut to make the doublet, looks almost the same as the solid piece of ironstone and can take a good polish.

This is what we call here in Coober Pedy as a Pay-Back, the house and mining vehicle was blown up, this is not mine, but I was living at the time only a street away and this happened at around 10:30pm at night and was on Christmas Eve 1994, I was in the house that I was house sitting and had some friends staying in the yard in there caravan that was traveling through and looked us up, they were staying with us for a week and this frightened shit out of all of us as it rattled the windows in the house something fierce.

We heard a big bang and I mean BIG, then I said to Pat and my friends that was a half a bag of Nitro and then about 20 seconds later there was a another bang and I aid that was another half a bag, must have been a payback and I was right, I went looking for where the noise came from the next morning and found it very quickly as I said it was only a street away, the people shown here are from the Police and were investigating what had happened, the Vehicle was a write off as you would expect, back wheels were still usable, not sure about the winch did not have a look at the time.

The house was badly damaged and was later boarded up when the front had been cleaned up, the worst part of it was that there was people living either side of this house, which the idiot never give a shut about when he did this, normally this type of payback is done on the field to the equipment not in town where people lives are at stake, one of the wheels off the front was thrown more than 100 yards away and came to rest next to a Opal Buyers house and they had children, what an idiot this person was.

Was was worse was that the person who they wanted to pay back, did not even own this vehicle not the house and was away in Melbourne on holidays, I was told later it was over money this guy owed to someone, the person who did this has never been caught, but there is a lot in his community who know who this is or was at the time and I say his, as there are over 40 different nationalities living here in Coober Pedy and well all get along most of the time, but this town is about money, people rob, kill and steal it, so this place is no different, just we do not kill we do a Pay Back.

The house was repaired after a couple of years and we moved on from this house to live in a rented dugout where the photo of the Front End Loader was taken, it belonged to Pats boss at the time, we stayed in that dugout for the next two and a half years until the roof in the dining area started to fall in and we had to look for another place to live, it was then when we did a deal with our 24 foot caravan as a deposit on the house that we now live in and own.

In 1997, just after we got the house above we decided that we would travel to the USA for a holiday and do the Gem and Jewelry show at the Denver, Colorado as I had heard about it and the idea was that this show would pay for the holiday with what we would sell, so I did some research on it and got some Gem and Lapidary Magazines and read up some more on it then got in contact with some people over in the US that promoted shows and we booked a few shows with him doing California and the one in Denver 13 shows in all, so then we started making plans for the 3 month holiday to the US ending up with going to England and then back to Australia, it took a lot of work and making phone calls to Custom Agents here and then he had to organize a Customs Broker over in the US to get me though customs there when I arrived and all of the paperwork involved and I had to itemize all of the opal stones, jewelry, opal rough etc, and all had to have its own number, what a hassle, cost US$300.00 for the Custom Broker over there just to meet us at the airport to get us through and they did not look at anything I was bringing in when I managed to get there, after all that work.

So we did some shows and we learned as we went along as we knew nothing about doing gem shows, but some of the people who did the shows for a living helped us in learning, as most are nice people to get on with and great to talk too and learn from, we made a few dollars and was paying our way and that is all we wanted was to have a free holiday, then after a few shows we were told that we just had to do the Tucson Gem & Jewelry Show and it was the biggest and the best, but we would have been out of the USA and back home when it was on, so we changed our plans, we rang up the Airlines and changed the return ticket over to another date 3 months later, at no extra cost.

We wanted to be in England for Christmas Day as we were only going for 10 days, but our visa expired to early for us to achieve that so I drove to LAX Airport from Escondido where I was staying with friend that I had made at the shows and went into customs and asked if they could extend the visa for two weeks so we could be in England for that date, but they refused saying that under no circumstances would they extend the visas so we had to leave the US on time, did not want to get our names in the computer if we overstayed, then we may not have been allowed back in again on our way back from England.

So we went to England, first time I had been back in 34 years and saw Pats brother, that's what we went for in the first place for Pat to see here last remaining relative, she went over in 1985 to see her mother for the last time as she past away a couple of years later, now it was time to see here brother as we do know when we would be able to afforded such a trip again, as for me I do not want to go back to England ever again, it has holds nothing for me and has changed too much, my roots lie in the USA as I used to live there as a boy from 1952 till 1959 when my mother took me back to England to join the RAF for a while.

My mother is buried in North Hollywood California and my farther is buried in Las Vegas and I do or did have two sisters roaming around in Las Vegas, the last time I saw them was in 1985 first time in 26 years, but we did not know each other and did not feel like family and I have not heard from them since, so I have no idea where they are right now.

Anyway, below is our first show at Tucson, this is our set up at the Days Inn, we managed a large booth at the front entrance of the show where they had to walk up the stairs to get in there was another entrance in the middle of the tent, you can see how we set up the booth and we called ourselves Australian Colored Opals then, in the bottles on the right was opal rough this is how I kept it in water, so the customer could see the color, we were selling all types of jewelry, WireWrapped jewelry, triplets, doublets, cut stones, 14k gold jewelry including inlay rings like I have on the web site now, you can see we had accumulated quite a lot of gear, lights, sheets, revolving tables, the glass showcase was rented, but I went on to buy 6 of our own, to keep fingers out.

Down this end was the scales, etc, earrings, bracelets cut stones and triplets, we did all right for the first time but never made a killing, if we could have got paid for what people touched and picked up we would have made a fortune and if I could have got paid for talking and giving advise not that I knew that much but they thought I did, again I would have made some good money, but it was an experience and the only way to learn is to do and we did, but it is hard work I can tell you, you think sitter there all day when it is quiet is easy but it drives you nuts, and the show starts at 9 am so you have to be there at 8:15 or 8:30 at the latest to get things ready for the day and you have to be there until 8pm until the shows closes then you have to cover things up etc and go and have dinner, get back to the motel and have a shower and get to bed and start over the next day and this show is on for 16 days so by the time it is finished you hope you have made some money to cover the expensive of it all and have some profit so you can have your holiday in between the shows, as I said we did this for 6 months, all the rest of the small shows were weekend shows, set up on Friday afternoon and pack up after the show ended on the Sunday night and off to the motel and on the road next morning to the next one, all go I can tell you.

As I said we did 13 shows in all, we started doing Gem Shows in America in 1997, while we were there on a 3 month holiday and finished up staying for 6 months We did shows in Denver/Colorado – Boise/Idaho – Salt lake City/Utah – Costa Mesa/California – Santa Rosa/California (2) – The American Opal Society–Anaheim/California – Tacoma/Washington – Eugene/Oregon – Riverside/California – Del Mar/California – Roseville/California, – Scottish Rights Center/San Diego/California and of course we finished up doing the Gem Show in Tucson, Arizona on this trip.

I say on this trip, because we went back to the USA to do the Tucson Show 3 more times, in 99, 200 and 2001 which was our last trip, we did not make enough profit for us to return in 2002 and as I had already forecast that the future for Pat & I anyway was to sell on the internet and I had already started learning HTML Language and building this web site in 2000 which took me one year to build and another to get it up and running with all of the items on it, so I would not have gone again after 2002 anyway, the Gem & Jewelry as they call them are getting worse every year, the promoters are filling booths with Flea Market Vendors, that sell anything but Gem & Jewelry, it got so we felt that we were in the wrong show all of the time, as people like me stopped going the promoters were taking anybody and everybody to make some money and the more of these people they took on the more Gem & Jewelry people stay away, so like I said it was like going to a Flea Market with Hippies who were lighting incense and playing American Drum Music and the likes, made me feel like I should have been smoking pot or been on drugs or something, I liked the Mexican Music and drinking Plonk with my friends, that wine to normal people.


Where things are always on the Hop		And the wheels are always in Motion