Yes, I am still around so thought it was about time to put pen to paper - nothing to do with a few people letting me know that they have been waiting for the next post!

All went well with the changes to our beach shack at Diamond Beach - we got the old van out with little fuss, it took longer to clean up all the old rubbish stacked underneath it than anything else - I didn't think so much rubbish could be put in such a small area. The new van went in without a hitch and looks terrific - it was in very good order inside, plenty of space and storage and will suit us for a long time to come. We were a little concerned as to the condition of the van as I purchased it off the net, but we are very pleased with it and it is great to have that island bed. At the same time our paving man was there to put pavers down under the carport and across the front of the block. He did a great job and was very patient with the boss - he was obviously very used to things wanting to be changed along the way. Anyway, Lyn was very happy with the job he did so we are all happy!

After everything going to plan with the van we were really looking forward to the China trip. We got down to Jan and Pete at Gosford on the Thursday and were to fly out on Saturday morning early. Our plan was to stay in Sydney near the airport Friday night to make things easier for Sat. morning. Luckily for us, we were still in Gosford on Friday morning when the bad news came. Jan, who had a lot to do with organising the tour, got a phonecall from the boss of Golf China, our travel agent, to say he had gone into liquidation the afternoon before and the tour was cancelled. There was a mad panic to contact all 30 odd people as most were getting themselves to Sydney that day - Dad had actually just ordered the taxi in Noosa to take him to the airport for his flight to Sydney, so I just caught him in time. We were all bitterly disappointed with the cancellation and it turned out that the boss of Golf China was a big noter amongst the golfing fraternity and had spent our money sponsoring golf tournaments here there and everwhere. The worst part was that because of the liquidation we are having big trouble getting our money back - our travel insurance won't cover it, but, we do have one more avenue and hopefully we will recoup some of it. We have certainly learnt a couple of valuable lessons from it - pay with a credit card and don't stint on travel insurance. Jan has started organising a tour for next year so Lyn will still get to see China.

We had two weeks to kill so it was easy for us, after a few days with Jan and Pete getting over the shock, it was back up to Diamond Beach to enjoy our new camp. Jan and Pete and two of their friends, George and Tosca, hired a cabin at the park and came up for a week. It was most enjoyable, catching a few fish off the beach and a couple of games of golf as well. There was a pod of whales off the beach every day which was great to see. It wasn't quite the holiday we had been looking forward to but all in all, we made the most of it and enjoyed the break.

The last six weeks have been flat out looking for the elusive gem, moving plenty of dirt and digging myself further down. I have been keen to go back to an area where I had drilled up some trace last year, it was at 30 ft and a little out of my reach for a while but I have finally moved enough dirt in that area to get a look at it. The bottom of the hole at present is at about 15 ft or 5 metres, so to reach the level with my small machine, I had to first make a bench to sit the machine on, so first job was to shift about 2 metres of dirt out and then make a ramp down to that level. There was not a lot of room as the photo shows but it was worth the effort - there was a small area where I got some quite nice colour. It didn't last long but I will cut about 70 nice stones from it as well as selling some in the rough - a good finish to what has been a pretty lean year. I have now finished the mining for the year and am at present just filling in deep holes and putting a bank around the main holes to keep the water out. I will not be back until March next year so the few days left before Xmas will be spent finishing the cutting left to do and closing the camp down.

We are going to Toowoomba to spend Xmas with the kids then up to Noosa for New Year with Mum and Dad and Mick and Louise. Mick wants me to help him for a month or so on his macadamia nut farms at Caboolture, then Lyn and I will head for Diamond Beach to enjoy the beach for a few weeks before heading back to work. We really enjoy Diamond Beach in Feb as school holidays are over and we nearly have the park to ourselves, we have tried staying there in Jan but it was packed out and not that enjoyable for us oldies.

I hope everyone has a good Xmas and all the best for 2009 - it is going to be an interesting year.

Images show the changes at Diamond Beach, enjoying good company with Jan, Pete, Tosca and George, the areas I have been mining, some nice stones we have for sale at present and one of our great sunsets to finish the year.

Summer has arrived early with a few pretty hot days and warm nights over the last few weeks - the temperature getting up to 37 during the days. I love the hot weather and am enjoying the mining, nearly all the other miners on the field have ended their mining season and have gone home. The majority only have basic camps with no electricity on the field at all - it is easy to keep warm with a fire, so once the first couple of warm days arrive, they are all packing up and heading home. I have set this camp up as a home with good insulation and air conditioning so summer is not a problem - I will be staying until Xmas time as usual and end up being the only miner here for a couple of months.

On the mining front I have been working both sites with some success on Gernot's lease. I have had the drill over there again and got good results from two of the six holes put down so have been busy opening up one of those areas. The levels are strong and are all over the place which is a good sign, there has been lots of trace and good potch ( clear opal ) showing, so I am feeling pretty confident that some nice material is not far away - it is a matter of moving the dirt.

The mining will be closed down for a while though as Lyn and I are off on holidays this weekend. As I mentioned in the last post, we are off to China for two weeks on a golf tour and, after having such a great time last year, I am looking forward to it immensely. We don't fly out until the 18th so are heading down to our beach shack to do a few days work with some major renovations to be done. We have a site in a big holiday park at Diamond Beach near Foster - Tuncurry right on the beach and spend as much of Jan - March each year there as possible. Lyn actually bought it on Ebay a few years ago and it is a pretty old camp as the images show. We have bought another van to replace the present one and we are also getting the outside area under the roof paved to make it more comfortable. The old fence is coming down and something a bit more modern and weatherproof going in so, we are looking forward to the change. We probably won't have time to repaint it but that will be a project for next January. The site has been a bit of an eyesore for a while and I know the park owners are pleased that we are finally doing some improvements, not that anything has been said, but when I contacted them to let them know, I could sense the relief that finally we were going to tidy the place up. I will have some photos for the next post after we return from China.

We have both been swinging a golf club on weekends to get in a bit of practise before the big trip. Most of the people on the tour are golfers so I don't worry to much about the competition, it is just a great experience to play on some of the best courses in Asia. Lyn has been showing her usual golfing style by smashing the tops in on some plastic balls she has been hitting in town. I am going to organise a lesson for us both during next week so hopefully that might help her a bit, or get Pete, our brother in law, to give her a few pointers. Knowing Lyn, her poor golf will stand her in good stead to have the perfect excuse to go shopping, especially if some of the other women are non golfers, as there was last year.

The next post will be after we return so will give an update then on the trip. Images this time show where I am mining at the present time showing the levels of stone, Lyn's style with a golf club, our beach shack in its present state, also caught a frill necked lizard on camera but I am not sure whether he was sun baking his tummy or with spring in the air and no mates about, the stick was the next best thing - I will leave it to your imagination.

It is into spring already and we have had some very welcome rain over the last three weeks. The falls have been spread out and it has been good soaking rain and with the weather starting to warm up, the ground has responded very quickly - it is a welcome change to the dry years we have had to endure lately. On the home front, the tanks are full which means no carting water for a couple of months, and, it has settled the dust around the mine for a while which is a real bonus as the next few months are always windy in this area.

Rain always has some drawbacks in the outback and it has meant that I have been able to do only a small amount of mining during this time. I have been looking for a small excavator for a while and was able to get onto a 12 ton Cat for the right price. The machine has finally arrived and is just what I wanted - being a small machine, it will be very economical on fuel which is a major consideration these days. I have been surprised at how strong it is and it is handling the digging here with ease, so hopefully, with a bit of tender loving Cooper care, it will do the job for a long while to come. It now means I can leave the old Sumo down at the other mine full time and work either as I want to which suits fine.

I have been continuing to get some lower grade material out from the other site which hopefully I will be selling shortly. There are only a limited number of buyers that handle this type of material and they like it in bulk to make it worthwhile to pick up - I have a couple of 200 ltr drums of it now, so time to move it on. It is used mainly for carving and is shipped to China for processing in most cases - the work they do over there is amazing and of course labour is very cheap. The material hasn't been improving to much so I might move to another spot I have been looking at - one thing with not being able to work, I have had time to have a good look around the mine and have targeted a couple of areas that look pretty good - not that I am any expert but it will give me a chance to test the divining ability.

Lyn has been out most weekends as usual, even though she missed one due to the rain but worked through, and came out on the Thursday, so had a long weekend which was great. We are going to China next month on a golf tour, so we spent time organising for that. I am looking forward to this trip, I went on the same trip last year and had a fantastic time. Dad, who is now 82, came last year as well and he is lining up again, as well as my brother, Michael. The trip is organised by Lyn's sister, Jan, so it will be a real family affair this year. Lyn has never been overseas before so is pretty nervous about the whole thing. The only thing I am worried about is getting some practise in as I haven't swung a stick since Xmas, so we both better start soon as the rest of the family are all keen golfers and play very regularly. Dad has been going great guns with his golf lately, he is still very fit for 82 - he and I won one of the rounds on the tour in China last year and he wants to repeat it again, so I better get out and start hitting some balls. I have painted a heap of old balls with luminous green paint and hit them up against the wall down in the hole so I don't have to chase them far and they are easy to find. Lyn hasn't played a lot of golf before so she will be down in the hole hitting them each weekend from now on as well - she hits a pretty good ball if she puts her mind to it.

We had a visitor over the last weekend - my other brother Andrew called in on his way home from Longreach. He lives in Sydney and is an events organiser, he was involved in organising the RM Williams muster held in Longreach last week and it was terrific of him to make a detour and call in for a couple of nights. We don't see each other too often so it was great to catch up - we will see him and his family in Sydney when we fly out to China next month but this was a welcome bonus. He was pretty tired after a full week and still had to drive back to Sydney in one day - a 12 hour trip, so a day off here was what he needed. He has owed me a carton of red wine for nearly two years and it was finally delivered and tested of course - it has had some compulsory aging and wasn't a bad drop either so we will probably share a bottle or two over Xmas as well.

Images show the new Cat excavator arriving and at work, a big boulder found, brother Andrew visiting, and Dad and I playing golf in China last year. I have also added image of a nice matrix nut I found today.

How time flies when you are having fun - another month gone by so quickly and it has been a busy time.

We haven't seen the kids for a while so decided to take a few days off and head for Toowoomba to visit them and do a bit of shopping. The kids are all well - Tammy and Trent have purchased a new home which is very nice and will suit them for a long time to come ( see photo ).They put their old home up for sale and sold it in three days so they are on top of the world at the moment as they have been able to organise to settle both on the same day so moving will be hectic but easy for them. Dad was asked to help but will be busy that day!!Trent has plenty of big fit mates from the airforce so they can do without me. They both look so well as they are getting into bike riding and are training pretty hard - Lyn was fair into Tammy because she has lost too much weight - I thought she looks great but that's mothers for you. Tammy is very busy at work as she has been promoted to small business manager in the bank - it's great to see her doing so well. Mitchell and Krizara are also going great - Mitchell has just changed jobs and we certainly noticed the difference in him. I thought he was always being unfairly treated where he was but he is very happy at Butler Toyota and it shows. He and Krizara are in New Zealand at the moment with Krizara visiting relatives there and the family getting together for a traditional celebration. Mitchell will be meeting all of Krizara's family from the Cook Islands and was both excited and nervous - haven't heard from him so all must be going well.

I took the opportunity to go down to the Gold Coast to see my old mate Graham - he and his son are involved in the lease next door here and I look after their machinery for them. They are very busy people and so have not been out here for some time. It was great to catch up, but I laugh every time I talk to Graham as he is past retirement age and continually talks about giving it all away and coming out here to chase opal, but he just won't stop. He has now just purchased another truck ( see photo ) so the opal mining has been put back for a little longer, one feels. He has been putting together a great camp infrastructure to move out here, so I guess the longer it is delayed the better his camp is going to be - that's if it hasn't all died of old age by then. I have been looking for a smaller excavator for a while and Graham found a good one for the money I had to spend - he has been working with trucks and earth moving machinery all his life and has many contacts so it was very handy for me. It was great to catch up with him and I am looking forward to the day he finally makes the break.

On the mining front I have made a major move. I have been disappointed with the area I have been mining this year and after finishing the last run, I had decided to try another good looking spot on the other side of the hole. Unexpectedly, I was approached by another lease owner not far away to come and work on his lease on a percentage basis and , after discussing with the boss, I decided to make the move. The lease is one of the original leases worked on Koroit and has produced some great opal over the years, it is a huge lease with lots of unworked ground . It has just changed hands and the new owner, a young fellow from Germany, realises that he will never mine it in a lifetime, so, getting somebody else in is an advantage for him and well as for me. He does not have machinery himself so already has another miner working there with him. Lindsay has been working on the lease for many years with the last owners and we are old friends - it was he who introduced me to opal many years ago, so I know he had plenty to do with me getting the opportunity to mine there. He is a big man with a heart to match and would give the shirt off his back in a blizzard if he thought it would help you. He does everything in a big way and his bbq made from a bulldozer blade is a fine example ( see photo ).

Anyway, I have moved the old excavator and truck over and have been going hard at for a couple of weeks. The ground is a lot harder there and so Lindsay with old " Dino ", his old excavator ( see photo ), opened up a couple of spots for me. Once the ground is open I don't have too much trouble besides breaking the odd pin on the tiger teeth, which is a bit of a nuisance as it can be difficult sometimes finding the tooth - usually falls down the hole and getting it out is another story on its own. I have had some success so far with a fair amount of very saleable material found so am pretty happy at the moment. There has been a fair amount of work done underground and I have already broken into a tunnel about 18ft down. I don't mind finding tunnels - it means there is potential there even though some has been taken out. The old miners would not persevere for long in an area if good signs weren't showing. I lowered Lyn down into the hole to have a look as she hasn't had the chance to have a close look at the way the old-timers mined (see photos ). It would have been very tough work with a pick and shovel and candle for light - no thankyou! I haven't had a chance to sort all what I have found yet, but, when I do I will take a few photos as some of it is very big and very interesting.

Images show Trent, Tammy and Bailey and all the family in front of their new home,Graham with his new truck,Lindsay and his bbq and he and " Dino ", Lyn inspecting the tunnel in the hole and some sunsets taken over the last month.

What's been happening the last couple of weeks - first things first and most importantly, Lyn is improving rapidly and getting stronger every day. She has been out to the miracle man again last weekend and he thinks she will be fine now but will be another couple of weeks before she is completely back to her old self. I had a good look at the stairs she fell down and it was amazing she didn't have more serious injuries, it was over 4 metres from top to bottom onto a cement floor. At the moment she is looking after that shop while the owners are away at a yearly conference for two weeks and they have barred her from going up those stairs - fat chance of that!

The mining has been progressing along as normal and from the photos you can see I have started the next run along the face. I got into nuts where I expected and they were dry for a bit longer than first thought but thankfully improved to the point where over about 3 days I was able to get some pretty reasonable colour even though the nuts stayed fairly dry. Normally the nuts harden up and are much more solid when colour starts to appear but not so much in this case. I think they will continue behind or back under the excavator as they were looking pretty good in the wall - won't find that out until next run in a month or two. It was great to get some rough to sell as my normal buyers at Yowah have been screaming for material and were very happy when I called them - they took the lot without hardly a glance at it as we have a very good understanding by now. The Yowah Opal Festival was held on the weekend so I was able to deliver the goods to them. It was a pretty hectic week last week because I wanted to cut a few stone as well to display and hopefully sell at the festival so it was mining during the day and cutting till midnight and then starting again about six am. for another couple of hours before back into the dirt. I was able to cut forty odd stones and a couple of specimens as well which always sell pretty easily. I haven't had to do hours like that since our old business days but no wonder I did it easily for 20 years because I enjoyed every minute of it.

The Yowah Opal Festival is held this time every year and the little mining town really comes alive. Miners from a fair area around turn up to display their opal ranging from very elaborate stands to the back of a ute - it is a typical market type atmosphere with all sorts of things on offer and food and bar all weekend with entertainment and a big feed on Sat night. It is a great time for miners to get together and show off what they have been getting and for a number of buyers from all over Australia to have a range of opal in one location to choose from. All miners know that no matter what you think your product is worth you only get what someone is willing to pay so there is plenty of dealing done before, during and after the festival. The old motto of " ask what you dare, take what you please " is part and parcel of selling opal and it all depends how desperate the miner is for cash flow as to whether he or she sells. As you can imagine most full time buyers can pick miners who need to sell and take full advantage of some situations. I had a pretty good day, selling a specimen and a few stones so came away happy. The big show at the Gold Coast is on in a weeks time and I will have all my stuff there with my selling partner so hope to sell a few better stones as more buyers will be there.

For the time being it is back to the grind but we have had a little rain and it also has been windy and cold so I have been catching up on the bookwork.

Images show the face tidied up for the next run, the start of the run, the festival at Yowah on the 2nd day when most were packing up and a specimen I cut and sold at the festival.

It has been nearly three weeks since my last post - I can not get over how quickly the year is going. I intended to post at least once a week when I started this blog site and will endeavour to get back to that from now on. The last couple of weeks has been a bit hectic because the boss had an accident at work in town and a nasty one at that. One of the places she works at has a storeroom on top of the shop and Lyn was going up to get a box when she missed the top step and handrail and took the express elevator to the cement floor three metres below landing on her side and getting a nasty bump on the head as well. Ambulance was called and he then called the fire brigade to help get her onto a back slab and to hospital for x-rays. Cunnamulla only has one doctor and being a Saturday morning he just happened to be having a coffee at the coffee shop just down the street and arrived to supervise the whole show so Lyn was very lucky there. X-rays showed no breaks thank goodness but she had three days in hospital and was in a lot of pain. Of course I was out at the mine when the fall happened and got the message when I came in for lunch so it was pack up and off to town to visit one very sore, distraught and doped up wife.

We have our resident " miracle man " here, a real bushie who studied acupressure techniques many moons ago and knows more about healing the human body naturally than anyone I have ever talked too. Lyn and I have been visiting him regularly over the years so as soon as she was out of hospital it was out to visit him. Lyn had a job to walk when she got out of the car but half an hour or so later she walked back out much straighter and stronger. Ian soon realised that a rib was out and the cartilage torn on the spine causing the grabbing pain and, using the acupressure put the rib back into place relieving a lot of pain almost immediately - it was amazing to see and a great relief for Lyn. The last ten days has seen her getting slowly better with me being chief cook and bottle washer and plenty of sympathy and tlc thrown in!! She finally got sick of me though and after another trip out to Ian she has now gone back to work and sent me back to the mine to find some opal. Torn rib cartilage takes some time to heal completely so she will be going a bit slower for a while but the old saying " you can't keep a good woman down " certainly applies here because the boss is back.

On the mining front I have gotten busy moving more dirt and have reached a very good level of stone as the photos above show. The level looks like a solid sheet of stone but is actually ironstone nuts packed tightly together - it comes out in a block but once hit with a hammer the nuts separate quite easily. This level so far has been a dry one with only the odd trace of colour right in the corner where the level is cut off by a fault line - you can see in the photos the level being split right in the corner. Another major fault cuts across the end of the level as well and this can be seen by the difference in the ground either side - the ground above the level is more tightly packed with clay looking much different to the blocky sandstone to the right of where the level ends. This side of the fault line is the better opal bearing ground and where I have found most of my opal so far but I can't help following that level just to keep an eye on it. Another major fault line running parallel with the way I am working could change things in a heartbeat - for the better I hope.

I said on my last post I would show some of my cut stones and the process of getting them to the finished product - with looking after Lyn the cutting got put on the back burner but with the first of the opal festivals coming up this month I have to get moving on it. I have a number of stones half done so will hope to show some over the next few weeks. The Yowah opal festival is on this month and plenty of buyers turn up there so I will be working on getting as many stones as possible cut and ready for sale.

The vege garden is going well as the photo shows and won't be long before we are eating home grown goodies.The other photos show the level discussed above and the side of the hole I am taking out at the present time.

It has been great to see some comments coming , thanks Tom and Blogga. Tom is my auntie Helen but has been Tom for as long as I can remember and we love to catch up when we get to the big smoke. Blogga, whoever you may be, I am just a busted-arse opal miner, not an English professor but I will make an effort to improve my literary skills and I will continue to keep the photos interesting.

This last ten days has been busy mining and I have been getting some nice colour in patches. I have not struck anything fantastic yet this year but I am very positive it will happen soon. I am working along a 100 ft face down to about 18 ft and am near the end of the second run along. Each run is about 10 ft or 3 metres wide and even though it doesn't sound like much it is taking me about a month per run. The dirt taken out has to be trucked away and even though it doesn't have to go far it all takes time when you are working on your own. The first 6 ft has to be gone through carefully so this part is fairly slow then there is a gap to the next level at about 12 to 15 ft and then there is some activity at the full stretch of the excavator so all in all a slow process. When you are out in the sun without a sole in sight who cares how long it takes - I just enjoy every minute.

The boss was out again for a long weekend and we got stuck into the area we were working on last week. I leave this area for when Lyn is here because there are lots of small nuts up to big boulders and it is great to have her up in the truck going through each excavator bucket, she also enjoys breaking them and is very good at it. We went hard at it for most of the weekend and finished the corner of the hole I wanted to get done. It is certainly an area we will continue to look at and I think we will attack it the same way we have been, that way Lyn gets to follow the process of watching the changes in the ground as we go through the levels.

We have had a couple of visitors this week, one being a pelican that walked in - yes, that's right, a pelican that walked down the ramp into the hole, hung around for half an hour or so then climbed up the mulloch and proceeded to wander through the camp and off down the road heading south. The Paroo River is not far from our lease and the pelicans seem to arrive after big rains to feed and I would say that the river is where this one was headed, we don't see many and I am not sure whether this one was young or old but it certainly couldn't fly - I hope it got to where it was going, it certainly seemed to have a plan in mind. It sure was a funny sight waddling down the road.

I have been promising to show some finished stones that I have cut - well, not quite there yet but should have some finished this week and I thought I would show my cutting setup and some stones next week.

Images this week show our unusual visitor and the boss on her " tonka toy ", as requested by a couple of people.