In The Opal Fields

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28690, 13 September 1958, Page 3

In The Opal Fields

Stones of Fire. By M. D. Berrington. Robertson and Mullens. 189 pp.

This fascinating and' unusual book from an Australian publishing house will be read with interest by anyone with a taste for novelty. The writer, Miss M. D. Berrington, a fairly recent arrival from England, is clearly of the stuff from which pioneers are made. Not content with merely repeating in Adelaide her experiences as a shorthand typist in London, she decided to join her brother, who was working with a bush trader in the interior. A bush trader has a van fitted up as a general store, and up country his arrival is an event. However, Miss Berrington and her brother soon found something that seemed even more exciting. They made their way to Copber Pedy, resolved to try their luck at opal digging. The life was primitive; but Miss Berrington seems to have enjoyed every moment of it. She had an occasional find of opals, but her small “parcels” were hardly enough to pay expenses, so she became an assistant in the store at Cooper Pedy and ,went on digging and exploring in her spare time. Her best find came when one day she “began picking almost mechanically. Before I had struck half a dozen times a good-sized piece of opal fell out. Pulling myself together, I carefully, but as quickly as possible, cut out the overlying ground. When this was done, before me lay as neat a little pocket of opal as could be found. The size of a large dinner plate, the pieces composing it fitted together . . . perfectly. One piece was missing—the piece that had fallen out and was now safely in my possession.” In due course Miss Berrington became ambitious of greater things, so she made her way to the Andamooka field, about which exciting rumours were beginning to circulate. Her one ambition now became the discovery of a little pocket of highquality black opal, .‘‘something that would sell for three dr foqr thousand pounds.” Miss Berrington has not yet realised her ambition, but, as she says, she is sure she knows where the big block came from. Office work has claimed her again, and she has been engaged in writing her very interesting book. Nevertheless readers of “Stones of Fire” will be surprised if the recent discovery of an enormous block of opal worth £20.000 has not drawn her back again to her old haunts at Coober Pedy.