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.

I can't get over just how quickly the year is going - winter is here already although temperatures have been very mild so far this year. We have had rain at last - 36 mm over 2 days, it was great to see the dust washed off the scrub and the camp and both tanks full again. We have been carting water for the last month so won't have to do that for a while.

I have been hard at it moving dirt but it has been a lean couple of weeks as far as colour is concerned - the ground looks good and there is a very good level at about 6 ft - the nuts are just too dry at the moment but I know it will change shortly. There has also been some sandstone boulders down deeper and these have been showing good promise with blue and green line in the bottom of some - found a couple of pieces worth cutting but the rest I will sell as specimen pieces. There always seems to be somebody turning up looking for those lower grade pieces so I keep everything - they may sit for a while but eventually go.

I have been wanting to take out a corner at the bottom of the ramp on the eastern side of the hole so when the boss arrived out last weekend I decided to put her to work - up on the truck going through excavator buckets and on her own tonka toy - the loader. Lyn is getting quite confident on the loader and is a great help. We have been using the small excavator to give it a run taking the top 10 ft out - the rest down to the clay level at about 20 ft will be taken out from down in the hole. Once this section is gone it will allow me to use more of the eastern end to backfill - again the problem of where to move the overburden to is always on my mind so this will give me a lot more space for a while.

I had 4 days off this last week with the rain and letting the ground dry as well as a trip to town for stores and fuel - diesel is up to $1.80 now and I know a lot of miners are getting worried about the cost of running machinery. I think a fair number are not working this year more so north of us where bigger machinery is used and costs are a lot higher - it is showing by the number of buyers getting around looking for material. We have been able to sell rough parcels as fast as the opal comes out of the ground this year but it is always the way - when demand is high you can't supply it! We are able to keep costs down pretty well here being a small operator so as long as we get diesel money each month we can keep poking along and enjoying ourselves.

I was back to work on Thursday and hit some nice colour during the day - lovely to see, not a huge amount but I was able to put together a bucket and a small lot of nice cuttable pieces for a buyer from Yowah who contacts us on a regular basis. They were straight over this morning so we have diesel money for another month.

I hope to get back into my cutting this next week and rain is forecast again so that will motivate me to back into the cutting room. I have quite a few stones half finished so must get to them soon - with the number of buyers getting around now they are no good the way they are so hopefully I can show a few of the finished product next week.

In the images this week I thought I would show you what we are searching for - the first is a very nice nut and the second a sandstone boulder we found a couple of years ago. The stone featured is a magnificent 24 carat stone I have decided to finally part with and the final image is the area we are mining at present.