From November to March, summer temperatures are hot and range from 35 to 45 C, and occasionally reach as high as 50 C. No wonder the locals prefer to live in the relative comfort of underground homes! Annual rainfall is unpredictable and minimal at an average of around 175 millimetres.

Opal was first found on the surface at Coober Pedy in 1915, while the New Colorado Prospecting Syndicate consisting of Jim Hutchison, his son William Hutchison, P Winch and M McKenzie were searching unsuccessfully for gold south in the area. This was on the 1st of February 1915, and the first opal claim was pegged eight days later. Originally known as the Stuart Range Opal Field (after early explorer John McDouall Stuart, the first European explorer to traverse the area in 1858), this name was changed to Coober Pedy in 1920.
 

Following the completion of the Trans Continental Railway in 1917,

a number of construction workers moved on to Coober Pedy and were followed by soldiers returning from World War 1. Conditions were harsh, with water and provisions having to be transported great distances and under trying conditions. The introduction of large underground water tanks improved the situation only marginally, as the water entitlement was only 60 litres per week.

Today Coober Pedy's water is pumped from an underground source 24 kilometres north of the town.

The water is treated by reverse osmosis before entering the town water supply system, en expensive process resulting in water costs of $5 per 1,000 litres. Nevertheless, the water is of excellent quality and people should have no reservations about drinking it!

Opal prices fell dramatically and production almost came to a standstill during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

As has been typical of Coober Pedy's history of cyclic boom and bust periods over the decades, an Aboriginal woman named Tottie Bryant made a sensational opal find in 1946 which initiated a new rush to the Coober Pedy opal fields. Mining activity grew rapidly during the 1960s as many new European migrants arrivd seeking their fortunes. Since then, opal mining has develop into a multi million dollar industry and Coober Pedy has grown into a modern outback mining town.

Opal is a type of silica similar to quartz,

but it contains water within its mineral structure. Precious opal typically contains 6% to 10% water. Opal occurs in many varieties, including precious opal and potch. In precious opal, brilliant colours are created by the diffraction of white light by silica spheres and voids within the opal structure, similar to a prism effect. The colour range of a precious opal is determined by the size and spacing of the silica spheres. Smaller spheres produce blue opal only, while larger spheres produce red opal. Red opal can also display the entire spectrum of colours. Opal colour is influenced by the angle of the light falling on it, and can change or disappear as the stone is rotated. Potch opal has silica spheres which are too small and irregular to produce colour.

If you are interested in purchasing precious opal,

be aware that to date attempts to establish guidelines for setting opal values have been largely unsuccessful. This is because of the infinite variation in colour pattern found in opals. The most important factors determining the price of opal are the background colour (black opal being more valuable than clear or crystal opal, which in turn is more valuable than white or milky opal), the dominant fire colour (red-fire opal being more valuable than a green opal, which in turn is more valuable than blue opal), and the colour pattern (harlequin opal with patches of colour is more valuable than pinfire opal with speckled colour). Be aware also that there is a significant difference between the value of uncut opal and that of a cut and polished stone.
Author Miguel Scaccialupo

OPALS - There Are So Many Varieties

It is no wonder that consumers do not know a lot about opals because they come from different regions in Australia and each region has a vastly different kind of opal.

How are opals formed? In different ways and that makes them a little more confusing.

The most widely known opal has always been the white opal. Have a look at antique opal jewelry pieces and you are likely to find a reasonably colorless white stone. Most of this stone came and still comes from South Australia. It is also called light opal and it has a light or white colored background and through that background shines the opal play of color. This type of opal was formed in the center of Australia which was once an inland sea. Silica seeped into through layers of sandstone where it hardened and became opal. Sometimes it seeped into cavities left by decayed and no longer existing sea shells and vegetation and the opal took on these shapes.

Then there is black opal and everyone who was used to seeing their grandmother’s white opal is simply stunned when they first see a good piece of Australian black opal with its magnificent play of colors. Black opal has a black or dark gray background and through this the color bursts into life. Black generally shows the colors off better than the white background. Black opal is found in the state of NSW in a region known as Lightning Ridge. Black opal is considered superior to white opal, but that is not to say that white opal isn’t gorgeous and can’t be worth a fortune. Black opal is formed the same way as white opal.

But then Boulder opal is formed differently to those two. It is found in the state of Queensland and is found in an ironstone rock. It looks like someone has melted colored glass onto a brown stone and it has stuck to it and run along the rock and achieved an undulating surface. So boulder opal is left on this ironstone rock and most times the stone is cut in a free form shape, simply following the shape of the color. Boulder is exciting stuff when it is of high quality!

Then there is Yowah opal mostly known as Yowah nuts. It is similar to boulder except that it is found inside a round, ball like piece of rock.

Then you will also hear of opal matrix. This is where a boulder type of opal runs through the rock like veins of color. The opal and the rock together are cut and polished. Quite often the rock has tiny pin dots of speckled color running next to a rich flow of brilliant color. This is also absolutely smashing stuff and often more reasonably priced than full opal.

There are also some very uncommon types of opals such as Hayalite which forms in volcanic rocks and is usually colorless. There is also what is known as opal pineapples. These are crystal clusters which are found in an area called White Cliffs in NSW.

Whatever type of opal you fancy will be cherished for generations to come and can be made into a unique piece of jewelry.

Author Gary Hocking makes custom jewellery specializing in Australian opals. He has his own website
www.opaljewelryexpress.com    Feel free to use this article as long as you keep the bio and the live link to his website.

Opal Jewelry - Why is It So Special?

Opal can be made into so many different items of jewellery. Sure, we all know that there are opal pendants, opal rings, opal earrings and so on, but opals, as opposed to other stones like diamonds and rubies etc, can be made into special kinds of jewelry.

There is an opal variety from Australia called Koroit and this is an unattractive type of stone when we compare it to an Australian Black Opal. It is mostly a reddish, dark brown lump of ironstone with slashes of opal running randomly through it. A jeweler cannot do much with that you might think, but simply drill a hole through it and attach a hefty chain or a cheap leather thread and it makes a gorgeous chunky necklace and it looks great on men as well as women.

Then there is boulder opal which often comes as a piece of opal connected naturally to a piece of ironstone or sandstone. The opal stone is undulating and may not have any of the fire associated with gem quality opal but when we look at it closely it has a pattern that might look like a seascape or a view of a mountain range or all kinds of other things. It might be the kind of thing you just like to stare at and imagine seeing all kinds of things in. Try doing that to a diamond! The beauty of a piece like this is that it is not gem quality and is very inexpensive.

I love jewelry like that because not only is it cheap to purchase but when you wear it people ask questions about it and they want to have a close up inspection of it. It is a great conversation starter. You never get people asking you if they can they have a look at your topaz ring. They never say: “Oh, where did you get that ring?” But with a $40 necklace of cheap Koroit or Boulder Opal you will get strangers asking what sort of stone it is and where did it come from.

Then there is one of my favorites Opal Inlay Jewelry. Beautiful pieces of crystal opal are set into the metal of rings, earrings and pendants. The opal is finished off flush with the surrounding metal. We often see this with boring stones such as Onyx and other lame looking minerals with very little color. But, when you make inlay opal jewelry normally you would use high quality opal and the results are fantastic.

You can put nearly any other gemstone next to opal it and it will enhance the piece of jewelry. Opals with diamond accents will always look stunning. Conversely, you can have a pink topaz or emerald main stone with inlay opals on each side and you have a brilliant item of jewelry then.

Opals can be inlayed, prong set or bezel set. They can be glued in place where as other stones will not appear attractive this way.

One comforting aspect of opal jewelry is that the stone will be mined by lonely men or husband and wife teams living in harsh conditions in outback Australia. There are no big companies involved and there is no forced labor here. It is a labor of love. Think about the cutting of rubies and other stones which is often done by children who should be at school. I am an opal cutter and although it is labor intensive I enjoy doing it and I have never met an opal cutter who is not passionate about opals so there is a kind of love attached to these stones all the way through from the man underground in the middle of nowhere to the wife or enthusiast carefully cutting and polishing the stone.

Author Gary Hocking is an Australian manufacturing jeweler who has his own website: http://www.opaljewelryexpress.com He will make you a beautiful piece of custom opal jewelry. You may copy and distribute this article as long as you keep the bio and a live link to his website.


 

I am terrified of heights and mildly claustrophobic, so why am I clinging to a swaying ladder half-way down an 80ft mine shaft with my mouth full of dust and my heart beating like a jackhammer?

There is a simple answer. I am suffering from a malady that afflicts many in Coober Pedy, a township crouching on the world's richest opal fields, in the South Australian desert. I have only been here 36 hours, but already I feel a little crazy. Opal is all around me, locked away under layers of rock beneath my feet. I can sense it, I can almost smell it. Now I want to see it in the raw.

Fifteen minutes later, I am crawling through a labyrinth of passages that culminate in a low chamber recently dynamited by Dave Marsh, a miner. Dave is flat on his back in the rubble, hacking away at a sandstone wall. He stops abruptly and hands me a chunk of rock in which his lamp picks out shimmering reds and greens. "Look at those bits of colour," he says. "That's opal."

We find only tiny pockets of the precious gemstone, but Dave will be back. Like the early miners, who placed their possessions in wheelbarrows and walked 150 miles across the Stony Desert to Coober Pedy, he is hooked. "Once you've had a decent find, it gets under your skin and you can't let go," he says. "I found $30,000 [pounds 11,300] worth on my second day underground in 1976. You just need to be lucky. You just need to drill a hole in the right place."

As jobs go, it's a gamble, but this is a town of gamblers, half- drunk on the notion of striking it rich. Permits are cheap, and prospectors require only a good instinct and basic equipment. "Everyone here is living on a dream," says Peter Rowe, a former miner. "Where else can you go to work broke and dig out a fortune in 20 minutes?"

For the sake of the dream, locals are prepared to endure harsh Outback conditions that include dust storms, plagues of flies and midsummer temperatures of over 50C. To escape the searing heat, they have retreated underground, carving homes - "dug-outs" - in a ridge of hills overlooking the town. Subterranean living has become the norm in Coober Pedy; there are shops, hotels, churches and restaurants underground.

The dug-outs offer some relief, but the brutal environment - combined with the lure of an easy dollar - makes for a rough and rugged frontier town with more than a hint of the Wild West. Trucks displaying "Explosives" signs clatter around the streets, and a notice outside the drive-in cinema, soon to reopen, politely requests that patrons refrain from bringing in dynamite. Poker games turn into three-day sprees, and mining disputes are settled with fisticuffs in the pubs.

In the Nineties, the police station and courthouse were bombed and a German tourist was murdered, her body hidden down one of the thousands of unmarked mine shafts that perforate the desert landscape. Two other disappearances of young women in the town, 530 miles north of Adelaide and 440 miles south of Alice Springs, remain unsolved.

Coober Pedy attracts more than its fair share of misfits and desperadoes, but it also has a warmth and raw charm that explain why people stay on long after their hopes of becoming millionaires have evaporated. Many residents claim that they stopped off only to buy petrol and never left. Some fell in love with the remarkable scenery: the colourful rocky outcrops of the Breakaways, used as the location for numerous films including The Red Planet and Max Max Beyond Thunderdome, and a singular moonscape bisected by the Dog Fence, which keeps dingoes out of sheep-farming country.

Tourism is flourishing, and disillusioned miners have opened opal shops, cafes and underground motels. But the opal industry continues to thrive, and to give the place its unique flavour. Approaching the town, you pass curious-looking vehicles such as blowers, a Coober Pedy invention: giant vacuum cleaners that suck out earth from below ground. The terrain is dotted with grey heaps of spent soil. There is an edge, something urgent, in the air.

The first opals were discovered by a 14-year-old boy, Willie Hutchinson, who was prospecting for gold with his father in 1915. Soldiers returning from the trenches of the First World War flocked to the area and excavated the first underground dwellings. A settlement took shape, which Aborigines called Kupa Piti, meaning "White Man's Burrow".

Most miners arrived in the Sixties and Seventies, converging on Coober Pedy from around the globe. The current population of 3,500 comprises more than 40 nationalities, including Greeks, Poles, Germans, Italians, Serbs and Croats. They live together in relative harmony in a town that produces 80 per cent of the world's opal, most of it bought on the fields by dealers from Hong Kong. Large companies play no part, with mining permits sold only to individuals or small groups.

Life is considerably easier now than in 1967, when Peter Rowe arrived from Melbourne. "I lived in a tent on the opal fields, washed in a bucket, lived off kangaroos and rabbits," says Peter, an affable 57-year-old. "There were 1,000 men in the town and 30 or 40 women. It was a wild place. Those were exciting days. It was like the Gold Rush.
"You'd find nothing for six months, and then suddenly it was everywhere. You'd pay all your bills and go on holiday, but you put most of it back into the ground - bought more machinery in the hope of finding more opal. Like putting your winnings back into a slot machine."

Like most locals, Peter, who lives in a neighborhood called Hopeful Hills, tells a story of narrowly missing out on a fortune. In 1972 he relinquished a mine to another family, who drilled 4ft deeper and found an opal seam worth $600,000 (pounds 226,000). "They never even bought me a beer," he says. "They were so embarrassed when they saw me that they crossed the street."

Broke and fed up, he gave up mining, and now runs a successful family pottery and tour business. Coober Pedy has changed, too; the main road, formerly a creek bed with tree stumps growing out of it, was sealed in the late Eighties, and the town acquired running water and street lighting around the same time.

The infrastructure came so late because the authorities regarded Coober Pedy as temporary, and the town still has that feel about it. It looks like a ramshackle afterthought of a place, a collection of concrete and corrugated iron plonked down in the middle of the desert. There is not a speck of green in sight; instead of front lawns, homes have junkyards where rusting car bodies and mining equipment lie abandoned.

If Coober Pedy has a greater degree of civilisation than in the past, it is a thin veneer. The pavements are still earth strips where stray dogs lounge in the shade, batting away flies. The golf course has no grass. Mining inspectors are no longer chased off the opal fields at gunpoint, but there are plenty of crooked and desperate characters around, none more reviled than the "night-shifters", who listen out for news of a big find and sneak off to strip the mine bare in the dark.

Dave Marsh was cleaned out by night-shifters recently and is fuming. "They're playing a dangerous game - they're taking their lives in their hands," he says. "If someone's in my mine, I might drop a bit of lit fuse and a detonator down to scare them, but there's some that might drop a bomb down." A more common form of revenge is to blow up the offenders' vehicles. Police do not enquire too closely into such incidents.

Syd Smart, a retired chief mines inspector, loves to reminisce about the era of Machinegun Joe, who would wander around town randomly discharging his weapon, and Karl Bratz, whose gravestone consists of a beer keg inscribed with the words: "Have a drink on me".

Syd was a coal miner in south Yorkshire before he came to Coober Pedy in 1970. "There was so much opal then that people would throw a hat in the air and sink a shaft where it landed," he says, offering another bottle of Westend Draft beer from a seemingly inexhaustible supply in his fridge. "No one else from the Mines Department would come here because of the town's reputation. When I took the job, they said, `Don't call us, we'll call you.'"
In Syd's home, a comfortable dug-out near the Serbian Orthodox church, the advantages of underground living become plain. Outside, it is pushing 40C - relatively balmy for January in Coober Pedy, but hot nonetheless. Inside, it is blessedly cool, while the low ceiling and honey-coloured stone walls convey the sensation of being inside the womb.

You could, perhaps, get used to the heat, but not to the dust, which coats your skin from the moment that you step outside. It makes your hair a matted, tangled mess.

The environment is not the only hazard. Peter Rowe pulled more dead and broken bodies out of mine shafts than he cares to remember during his time as head of the Mine Rescue Squad. The earth tracks that criss-cross the opal fields are studded with warning signs. Tourists have died after failing to heed advice to avoid walking backwards while taking photographs.

Despite the dangers, opal mining retains its lure. Everyone mines at least part-time, including teachers and policemen. Lloyd Hetzel is a driver and maintenance worker, but his preoccupation is mining. "I've been here 15 years and I've never had a good find," he confesses. "It's quite embarrassing, considering all the hard work I've put in."

Originally from the coast, Lloyd extols the joys of life in Coober Pedy - although his wife left him soon after they arrived, a common occurrence in a town teeming with single men.

In the saloon bar of the Opal Inn Hotel, Jimmy Nikoloudis recounts a 38-year love affair with opal. "I found a bit in 1964, enough to buy a house, but being young, I went to Adelaide and went dancing with beautiful women instead. I came back and found some more, and that's how it's been: up, down, like a heartbeat graph."