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.

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.