OPAL WORTH £1500

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23500, 14 May 1938, Page 14

OPAL WORTH £ISOO

FOUND ON NEW SOUTH WALES FIELD LUCK FOR OLD MINER AT LAST (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY. May 7. An oid German miner on the Lightning Ridge opal field, in the far northwest of New South Wales, has found a “pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.” His discovery was the largest opal seen on the field for 20 years, and he estimates that, when cut. it will yield £ISOO. No one knows the old miner except as Otto. He probably has a surname, but he is the only one who is unaware of it. In many years at the Lightning Ridge field, undergoing all its hardships and primitive conditions of living in heat and dust and amidst the township's myriads of Hies and mosquitoes. Otto had never made a real find. He lived with a mate in the poorest circumstances, in a bark hut furnished with saplings bolted together and a few tins for cooking. Otto was on the point of abandoning the shaft he had worked for a long time, and had sunk to 40 feet as “just another hopeless drive.” when his pick glanced off some hard object. A few more blows disclosed a gorgeous opal, as large as a man’s fist, and weighing lOoz uncut.

Otto’s eyes now flash like the fires in his precious stone, and he is not even concerned that he has no place in which to lock the opal away. Otto has no locks on his lonely shack among the dumps of old diggings. The flashing stone is kept in a tin with his curios. These include four pieces of petrified bone, studded with opal. They are almost as precious to Otto as his big opal.