AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 117, 13 November 1929, Page 18

AUSTRALIA

HOME OF BLACK OPAL

MINING IN THE INTERIOR

A MOST ELUSIVE GEM

■ One of the few forma of mining which affords no indication of the prizes to be won is opal-gouging at Lightning Ridge, Australia. Opal is "where you find it"; there is nothing to tell you-whether to sink here or 10ft to the north. You just dig and chance it. ' ' ■■

Probably not one Australian ia a hundred has seen real black opal, that moat elusive and most magnificent of gems. Tet the home of tho black opal is in Australia, and nowhere else in all the world has it been found, writes G. Findlay in the "Sun News-Pictorial."

So prevalent is the practice of "backing" opal—mounting a thin slip cf ordinary gem-stone on- black glass or black or grey potch—that it requires a connoisseur to appreciate tho genu-' me jewel, which is a single piece of ■tone.

Not everyone would care to face the long journey that leads to the natural habitat of the black opal, and fewer atill would care to undergo the hard conditions of those who ssek it in the desert sandstone. For this most precious form of quartz can only be obtained as the guerdon of toil and privation.

The locality in which it occurs is Lightning Ridge, 46 miles from Walgett, N.S.W., within 50 miles of the Queensland border. The district is usually parched, and is subject to occasional dust storms. Water at times is scarce, and the heat in summer bears comparison with the barren rocks of Aden.

Bos, balah, whitewood, and other •crubs are to be found on the gently undulating country, .which is by no means as desert as Cooper Pedy, in Central Australia, where lighter,varieties of opal are found. Like the latter place, its distinguishing upper stratum is sandstone. This rock, which forms the v.rust of thousands of square miles of inland Australia, was formerly the bottom of an ocean. PIERCING THE CRUST. There is a particularly hard species of it. at Lightning Ridge,- roundly- cursed by a generation of hardy opal guugers, who have had to pick and shovel and blast their way through 'it in the hope of striking the softer, pipeclay-like material in which nodules or " nobbies'' cf gemstone usually are found. There is no royal road to the opal. One has to choose a site and dig at random, for there is little or no surface indication. No donbt there were "floaters" in the-early days of the field —actual weather-cracked opals on the ground. It must have been some •ueh manifestation that led Charlie Nettletbn, an old prospector, to dig down and discover the existence of opal in the field in 1903.

So the old opal gougers dig—a sort of grave-like excavation, more often than not destined to be the grave of fond hopes. With pick and shovel and drill and dynamite they go down 20 to 60 feet or more, and they meet the opal-bearing dirt, or their patience gives out. ,

As soon as it becomes impossible , to throw a shovelful of rubble out of the bole with comfort, they erect a windlass on four crossed logs at the mouth of the shaft, and wind up the material in lide buckets. Most of them do not trouble to remove the rubble from the mouth of the excavation, but simply add more and more crossed beams to raise the windlass as the mound grows higher. Thus the windlass is sometimes seen topping a tremendous pile of debris, 10 to 15 feet high. . It does' not take much opal to pay if or all this hard work, for a piece as big as the thumbnail may be worth £50 or more, according to its quality. Just a thin slice of spectrum-coloured gem-stone running through a nodule of ■olid black matrix is all that is required. . The trouble is to find such a rarity—for even on the opal field it is extremely rare.

- Of tener, the coloured stone ia associated with grey or purplish-grey matrix, niaking a very valuable gem indeed, inferior only to the genuine black. This variety is found at Grawin, 32 miles from the Ridge proper, and commands a high price. r \ ; MINERS DWINDLING. 'There is no hardier class in the ■world than the opal miner. But the class seems to be dying out. Where iormerly hundreds of these wiry, tireless, sun-tanned, sinewy men thronged the fields in Queensland, Central Australia, and New South Wales, there are now only a few score, many of whom have grown old in the search. For younger, stronger men, there is apparently too much uncertainty of reward, too much certainty of toil unrequited, too much primitive life, far from the artificial lures of modern civilisation.

'Oftener than not, the opal gouger's hpme'is a mere hovel. The scantiest protection from the elements serves his turn. Among the scrub surrounding the glittering white dumps of tho opal field he builds his lowly hut of stones, box bark, sheet, iron, petrol tins, canyes—anything that comes to hand.

Rain-water, carefully collected from iron roofs, of ten runs short. The miner must be used to such hardships as tho lack, of a fresh-water supply. Ho runs rain-water in the wet season (if any!) into old, disused shafts. Then, as the need arises, he draws it up with bucket and windlass.

Mosquitoes may be revelling in it by the million. A stray goat or two may have fallen into the excavation. The miner does not—dare not —worry. He boils the water, killing any germs it may contain, and making a sort of mosquito soup, which does him for his tea. He cannot afford to be particular. He has no luxuries, and few amusements. There is a billiard-room at the Eidgo, where flying ants and other winged creatures, singed in the lights, fall in scores on the table and multiply the hazards of the game. If there are any other institutions for relaxation or amusement, they are difficult to find. The field has seen better, days. Not and again a large stone is found, and the news that a digger has-made a small fortune in an hour draws seasoned oW gougers from out-of-the-way corners of Australia to try their hand once again in the favoured locality. Last year there were two lucky "strikes" in the black opal field, worth several thousands of pounds. These, however, are rare events. Only ■one man in a hundred has any real Inek at the game. On the average, the opal minor earns ajs bread and butter, and no more. His greatest difficulty is to dispose of ordinary, low-class stone, of which Nature has made an overwhelmingly large amount, in comparison with the really precious jewel-stuff, so marvellously beautiful that it "is seldom, if ever, shown in a jeweller's window. PREJUDICE DYING OTJT. Germany used to take a good deal of the poorer quality, but the war practically killed the trade. Japan now buys some of it for opal chip decoration. The markets of the world have! hardly been explored sufficiently. Opal gouging, bnying, and selling have been happy-go-lucky businesses of individual •Cork Yet there moat be as much opal j

still in the old fields as would pay a large slice of the interest on the country's national debt!

There is juo longer the foolish prejudice that pnee existed against the stone. It is by far the most attractive of all gems, and deserves to be more popular. Yet the anomaly exists at present that, although the world demand for genuine black opal is insatiable, opal-digging as a means of livelihood is dying. Among the chief considerations that still hold a handful of hardy old gougers to the {nest ia the strange fascinating of op and, with its wonderful sunshine and clear, dry air. Severe aa they are, the living conditions ;have actually spelt salvation to many of the men. For the rough, outdoor life has ensured health, which is beyond black opal and many precious stones.