Australia's National Treasure - Part 2

Fire of the Desert..... What picture does that conjure up? Amazing colours of Red, Orange and Yellow. Imagine the Desert at night, Black as Black, no city lights casting a Silver haze on the horizon.

I've only ever experienced this once and it wasn't in a desert, but on a tiny coral cay off the coast of central Queensland. It was dark, I mean really dark, if it wasn't for a torch I would have been seriously lost till morning. So what does all that have to do with Australia's National Treasure or rather Opal?

I while back I wrote about Opal in the form of Yowah Nuts that I discovered on a trip to the markets on the North Coast. I thought that I might continue as promised and cover some of the interesting Opal mining areas of Australia.

Around 1993 Opal was declared to be Australia's National Gemstone. Makes sense really, we are home to the world's highest quality, precious Opal with the best known found at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. Lightning Ridge is known for its Black Opal which is almost only found in Australia. Black Opal has a background of black, blue or grey with colour plays of red, green, blue, violet, magenta or yellow. I guess therefore its easy to see why our indigenous people named Opal, Fire of the Desert. Opal which is made up of silica minerals, is rather unique in that it has no true colour of its own. The amazing colours are actually created when light rays hit planes of microscopic spheres contained in the opal.

Other well known opal mining areas in Australia are White Cliffs also in New South Wales and Coober Pedy in South Australia (yes this is where people actually live underground, but more about that later.) The opal found in these areas tends to be white and is the most common of the precious opals.

Australian Opals are known for their brilliance and renowned for their stability, as they don't crack or craze whilst being cut or polished or during hot, dry conditions. Most Opals in Australia are formed in weathered rocks deep underground in very arid areas. A good example of this is Coober Pedy in South Australia.

I've always been rather fascinated by the town of Coober Pedy and hope to visit sometime in the future. It's a bit of a tourist mecca, attracting 100,000 per annum and with a population of around 4,500 from approximately fifty different countries in the world. The locals are described as a colourful lot, quickly making art of many things.

Guided tours to various places of interest are available, as well much of the town and its homes are underground. Where else in the world could you stay in an underground Bed and Breakfast or visit an underground Art Gallery, Pottery, Museum, or Church of which there are a few.

Homes or Dugouts as they're known are located underground too. In summer and winter, they are insulated from the harsh climate, remaining at a pleasant 25 degrees C. There is also an award wining designed shopping complexe and a golf course without a stitch of grass. I expect that most of the course is made up of Overburden dug from mine shafts.

From April to October the weather is pleasant. What is typical of a semi desert climate, the days are cool (16 to 20° C) but the nights are cold. From November to March the weather becomes very warm and summer temperatures range from 35° to 45°C just in the shade. There are also occasional dust storms. Rainfall is minimal at around 175mm per annum and can fall during any time of the year.

North-east of Coober Pedy is the longest continual construction in the world - a Fence. Stretching some 5,300kms, a little less than China's great wall at 6,700kms, it begins south east of Brisbane, Queensland and ends up north of Ceduna in the Great Australian Bite. Originally the fence was built to protect sheep country in the south from Australian native dogs or Dingos. Now days it also keeps out Rabbits, Emus and other wild life.

"Mad Max" and "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" movie fans, can visit "Moon Plain" not far from Coober Pedy. It is a vast rocky plain unlike anywhere else in the world. The lunar like landscape has been the set for many movies, and I thought Mt Wellington in Hobart, Tasmania was eerie.


Photograph taken by Bernie of Mt Wellington - Tasmania
Bibliography:
Dept of Natural Resources - Qld Government
Dept of Prime Minister and Cabinet
Rediscover Opals in Australia - Stephen Aracic
South Australian Government Tourism

Aussie Opal Miners Protect Digs.

Recently out at a place called Mundubbera approx. 390 kms north west of Brisbane, Queensland, there's been a discovery of an outbreak of a very vicious plant - The Hudson Pear. A cactus, bought to Australia from Mexico as a garden plant, is so vicious that it's spikes have been known to cause serious injury and even death when a fella fell into a patch at Lightning Ridge (one of Australia's Opal Mining communities) and had a heart attack. It's spines or spikes are so tough they can penetrate boots and car tyres and need to be removed with a pair pliers.

The Cactus was first reported in New South Wales in the 1960's. According to various sources, it spread from a Cactus nursery but was further assisted by Opal Miners deliberately planting it around their diggings to keep thieves away.

In New South Wales reports estimate that this pest now covers up to 100,000 hectares of land, rendering the land useless. It is capable of spreading easily as new plants can grow from segments of any size. It is also found in Southern and Western Australia and has naturalised in South Africa. Two herbicides are however currently available for treating the Cactus.

Pic courtesy of NSW DPI

Opal - Australia's National Treasure

Whilst I was visiting the north coast last weekend, I came across a stall at one of the local markets selling opals from Yowah, a small remote opal mining town which is approximately 165 km's from Cunnamulla or just over 1000 km's from Brisbane on the east coast of Australia.

There isn't much at Yowah. It's a popular destination for opal fossickers, they come to fossick and then stay. It's no treechange or seachange, can reach 50 degrees C in the summer and go below zero in winter. They do hold an opal festival and jewellery design competition each year, only stipulation is that designers use Yowah opals in their creation.

If you go to Yowah, you need to bring your own beer, cause there's no pub and no beer, (well at least they warn you) as well, no church if that's were you like to go on Sundays and apparently no law enforcement officers in the town. There is however a caravan park and a nine hole golf course with sand greens and earth fairways, along with numerous opal cutters and retail outlets selling opals.... thought I'd save the best part till last!

Yowah is primarily famous for what are known as "Yowah Nuts".
These nuts are small ironstone boulders which are spherical to ellipsoidal (sort of like a squashed egg shape ) and up to five centimetres across. They might have hollowed centres, be filled with powdery clay or a kernel of opal. Those with a kernel of opal were what I had the opportunity to view. The nuts are found in layers of 150 to 600mm in thickness at depths up to 20m in a ferruginous sandstone.

The stall owner, a gentleman, went to great lengths to explain the attraction of his opals, along with colours, how they're cut and so on.

I had been planning to write a post for a while on Australian opals, but as I've never owned one myself and not being that attracted to them as most that I've seen have been white with hints of fire, ocean and forest and smaller than a shirt button, so they didn't really appeal to me colour wise or size wise. I've always thought of those stones as wishy washy and rather boring.

I was really taken with these Yowah opals though. Yes they appeared to be just polished stones with tiny effervescent spots of colour, that glistened and sparkled like tiny pieces of glitter set into milk chocolate.... but some of these stones where large, and really suited as pendants or an embellishment for a fancy wired cuff. Only problem was I was a little short at the time of the hundreds of dollars of cash I would have needed to purchase the one I really liked.

As you can see by this little specimen, not all Yowah Nut Kernels are actually solid opal. All the same I think this is a very nice specimen would indeed make a great feature as part of a piece of wired jewellery.

to be continued.....

Pic 1. Yowah Nut Kernel
Pic 2. A piece of Yowah Matrix
Pic 3. A Yowah Nut showing that all kernels are not always solid opal