October is nearly gone already and here I am sitting here in jeans and jumper, it is raining cats and dogs and it is 16 degrees C. Yesterday at this time in the morning it was 35 degrees and the sweat was pouring off me - the weather has been so changeable this last few months but the rain is very welcome after so many dust storms that have been raging most days over the last month. September/October are notoriously windy months but it has been particularly bad this year and with no rain for most of the year so far, the dust has been very bad - I can't whinge though, it is part of living out here - you have to take the good with the bad and I wouldn't change it for anything.

So much for all my going on about working on the website - http://www.cooperopals.com/ - I haven't done a damn thing since my last post except put some sold signs on the stones that I have sold. These were all sold to buyers here so I haven't yet sold anything off the site but I know that once the effort is put in the rewards will come. Now that the hotter days are coming I will only be mining in the mornings so will start spending more time on the processing and selling side.

The big news following on from last post is that we are grandparents again - we have a grandson, Noah James Oldham, born at 4.20 on Tuesday morning, 20th October. Tammy was actually due on the 12th so the little bugger was quite content where he was - anyway, all went well with the home birth and mother and son are both terrific and Trent is one very proud dad. I don't know where the name Noah came from , James or even Jim sounds much better to me - I think I'll call him that rather than Noah! Lyn has had a couple of weeks at Toowoomba with them helping out and is actually on her way home this week loaded up with supplies for the next couple of months. We always do our dry goods shopping while we are away as it is so much cheaper than buying out here. I only have a couple of photos for now but will certainly have plenty when Lyn gets home for the next post.

On the mining front - it has been a very busy time since finishing the big hole at Gernot's, and as I said in my last post, we were moving over to Gene's lease to go down even deeper. Well that job is now finished and I am back on my hole on Gernot's as I would like to finish the job there before moving the machines back over here to the Shallows just before Xmas. It turned out to be a massive hole at Gene's - we were down on a level of nuts at nearly 50 feet and it was amazing to see a 30 ton excavator in a hole that deep, as you could walk up to the hole and not even know it was there. I was shifting the dirt out of the hole and moving it away so at times would be perched up on mulloch heaps 20 feet in the air and the other machine was a long way down below me. The actual amount of material we got was disappointing as Gene did not realise how much that part of his lease had been tunnelled out before he purchased it - we had some quite frustrating days where we were consistently breaking into tunnels - there was little material left there for us. We did finally get into some virgin ground and did find some nice nuts - a couple in particular as the photos show. The only trouble was that by then we had run out of room so it was agreed that we wouldn't open the hole up anymore this year but would continue next year, and I think that will be very promising by the signs we had at the finish. I did just over 70 hours on my machine and with what we got should break even or maybe a little more, so I was very happy with the outcome - could have found nothing at all! At least we now have the hole open and it will all be easier for next year when we attack it again - I certainly learnt a lot as I have never had a go at a hole that big before.

Everybody has now left the field for this year except for Graeme next door so it is good for both of us to have someone else around until we both pack up before Xmas. He is expecting his new excavator any day as he has been battling along with his 6 ton machine and finding it a little frustrating. He and his son have purchased a 23 ton machine - a perfect size for digging in this area and I know he is looking forward to it arriving. He has been giving me a bit of a hand down on Gernot's driving my old machine and enjoying seeing some opal come out. We haven't found anything to fantastic but enough saleable material to pay for the diesel. I have quite a lot of stuff to process over the coming months so should end up with a reasonable amount to bombard the website over summer - I had better start getting serious about it as Xmas is coming too quickly.

Photos show Noah Oldham at 6 hours old, proud dad Trent and brother Bailey with Noah, Nanny Lyn with Noah - the hole at Gene's getting a start, getting bigger and deeper, the opal ground starting to show, one of the many tunnels we uncovered, the two machines working together and two of the better nuts found.