The Opal Seekers

Southland Times, Issue 24273, 2 November 1940, Page 11

The Opal Seekers

LIGHTNING RIDGE. By lon L. Idriess. Angus, and Robertson, Sydney. Price 6/-. lon L. Idriess has made use of his personal experience from the days when, he first began to publish paragraphs and short pieces in Australian newspapers.; Later he amplified the method in his j books, which are now best-sellers in his own country. For his latest book he goes even more directly to the sources ! of his rich materials. The thin imaginative veneer has been removed, and he presents his large public with some chapters in autobiography. The transition is not abrupt. Mr Idriess has had an adventurous life, and has small need to embroider the facts of his personal history. He writes casually of his childhood in outback towns, of his early love for the bush, and of his work (while still a boy) at the silver mines of Broken Hill. After a brief stay in Sydney he found a job as station rouseabout. He left in a hurry to become a horse-breaker, a bush-carpenter’s labourer, a horsetailer on the great stock routes, and 1 finally an opal seeker at Lightning Ridge. It is to this last phase of his

earlier career that he mainly devotes his attention. With a quick eye for detail he describes the conditions under which men sunk their shafts and dug feverishly in search of precious gems. Lightning Ridge was the only black opal field in the world. All types of men drifted there and scratched hopefully in search of a fortune. Mr Irdiess writes entertainingly of events and personalities, of his own bad luck and brief good fortune, and of the lonely back country he came to know so well. This book will give pleasure to all readers who have felt the magic of gum tree and wide plains. They will be glad to notice, too, that the promise of a sequel lurks in the final chapter.