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.

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.

Another week gone so fast - I have been flat out mining all week except for some of the weekend when Lyn was here. We put on a bbq on Sat night when some miners came over for dinner - it is great to get together and have a chat over a beer or two when opal is not the main topic - family, football and fuel prices being the usual talking points. There are a number of different nationalities here on this field and it is like a meeting of the united nations when we all get together but this time we Aussies outnumbered them with only one from Italy and one from Germany - what great company they are.

I have been wanting to get on and explain my mining programme and guess now is as good a time as any but where to start! There are two main methods used here at Koroit as on most fields - open cut and underground. Underground is where the miner works underground using a jackhammer or digger and moving dirt to the top via a hoist or blower ( giant vacuum cleaner ) into a truck and then moving to a mulloch heap - I will not go into the details too much because this is definitely not my game - doing the rabbit thing is not my idea of a good time.

Open cut mining is the only way for me - this is done using an excavator to remove dirt and a truck to move dirt to the mulloch dumps. The ideal scenario is to be taking the dirt out of one side of the hole and after removing the opal bearing nuts dumping the dirt back into the other side of the hole already mined - filling behind as you go. It sounds simple but it most certainly isn't because the dirt you take out just does not fit back into the same area - the overburden or mulloch is the biggest problem for the open cut miner and I would spend a third or more of every day moving mulloch. The biggest challenge is to organise this from the start so that mulloch does not have to be shifted a number of times. There has not been a lot of previous work done on these leases so I spent most of last year trying to organise the hole so that I could dispose of the mulloch as simply as possible - I don't doubt for a minute that it will eventually catch up but hopefully I will get a number of years before this happens. There are plenty of miners who have moved onto leases that have been worked haphazardly with great heaps of dirt everywhere and they have great difficulty trying to work out which ground has been worked and more importantly which is virgin ground.

The name of the game is to find the levels of ironstone nuts or boulders containing opal and this can be the same as the proverbial needle in the haystack scenario. Fortunately we have reasonably modern methods to narrow things down a bit - the main one being an exploratory auger drill. We are very fortunate to have a nine inch drill here on the field so this method is used by most miners frequently - it doesn't always find opal, in fact I have had many holes drilled here and have found colour in only a couple but the information it gives on where the levels of nuts are is invaluable.

At present I am mining from the surface down to a depth of about 18 feet or 6 metres approx. There are a number of levels of ironstone nuts starting from virtually under the surface to 6 feet then another main level at about 12 feet but the levels differ greatly at times so every bucket has to be processed so as to not miss any nuts - patience is the key in this game and it is always in the back of your mind that the nut you miss could be the one you have been looking for all day. The presence of natural faults in the ground play a major role in what is happening with the levels and I will endeavour to explain this as time goes on.

The results this week were ordinary after a couple of good weeks previously but a couple of buyers came by so I was able to sell what rough or unprocessed material I had on hand. The stone has been very dry but I know I am heading toward more promising ground - it is just a matter of moving the dirt. Hopefully I will have some rough opal to show next week and will explain my processing procedure.

Images show a great sunset we had this week, the gang we had for dinner, Lyn breaking nuts and the hole where I am working at present.

Lyn came out as usual for the weekend all geared up for the vege - garden to be built. Lyn works in Cunnamulla during the week on a casual basis doing the books for two businesses in town - she enjoys this immensely and the extra income doesn't hurt either. After a run down to the property owners cattle yards for some manure, the vege and herb garden came to fruition in an old bath tub and old copper. It was then up to me to put the fence around to stop the goats and kangaroos from cleaning it all up first night. It all came out well and the boss was happy.

Has been a week away from mining this last week. I broke a filling off and was lucky enough to get into our dentist on reasonably short notice so it was off to Toowoomba 7 hours drive away. Our kids both live in Toowoomba so it was great to catch up with them. We stay with Tammy, our daughter, husband Trent and grandson Bailey. Our son , Mitchell and partner Krizara live around the corner so it is family time when we are there. Lyn had a couple of old fillings to have repaired as well so $1100.00 later we were both fixed up and ready to do some shopping which always happens when you get to the " big smoke". Saturday saw me off to watch Bailey play soccer while Lyn did the usual trip to the hairdresser, then we all went to lunch with Lyn's sister Kay and husband Greg coming up from Ipswich. Sunday was a cold windy day but we all went off to the markets after I made contact with a couple of opal buyers who live in Toowoomba. I didn't sell a lot but it is always good to make contact and keep in touch with them.

We did some final grocery shopping on Monday morning and then it was on the road home to Cunnamulla arriving back about 6pm. The shops in Cunnamulla certainly provide all the basic items but it is nice to visit the big stores to get those little extras that you miss. It was back out to the camp today after getting more fuel and some groceries for a couple of other miners.

I will start on the business part next post showing where I am up to with the mining.

Images show the vege- garden being created and the family in Toowoomba.

Koroit Opal Field

I thought I might explain a little about the area where I mine. Koroit field has been mined at various times since the late 1800s / early 1900s. We have found tunnels on these leases down 20 ft that are only 3 to 4 feet in depth running 40 to 50 feet in different directions from a hand dug shaft. These were most likely dug with candle and pick, the miners most likely laying on their side pushing the dirt behind them - not my way of making a living. Koroit produces many types of boulder opal - the main one being boulder matrix and is world famous for this product. Matrix is where the opal is part of and runs through the ironstone making fabulous patterns and each stone is individual - you don't see two stones exactly the same. The ironstone is exactly that , very hard and takes a very good polish. The opal is found in ironstone nuts - these can be from the size of a ping pong ball up to huge in size but the average on these leases is about two tennis balls joined together and I break them with a hammer as gently as possible - you can't see any opal on the nuts so they have to be broken. As a rule the nuts are found in distinct levels but on my leases here there are no rules - the levels are all over the place, every excavator bucket has to be gone through so patience is the key. Miners do a lot of exploratory work before committing to digging an area and this is usually done over time by simple divining and using an exploratory drill to find levels - if colour comes up from a drill hole then you are feeling pretty confident that you are on a winner but there are plenty of exceptions to this theory. I have had many holes drilled here and it is a great tool for deciding where to dig and though I have found some very nice opal I have had only limited success from the drill holes. There are many different areas on Koroit field and every lease is individual in the depths of opal bearing ground as well as type of matrix opal. These leases I am working are certainly diferent to most on the field and I will endeavour to show them as time goes on.

This might do for this post so will put on some photos of the opal matrix and some other nice stones I have found here.