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.