Just Convict Work:Break Big Rocks into Little Rocks

After a Yowah or Koroit Opal miner moves tons of dirt to find some ironstone nuts he/she must open them to see if they carry opal. some do this with mini hatchets, rock hammers, and saws. The hammers and hatchets do much damage if the opal is there so the saw is becoming the weapon of choice. However, this is time consuming and costly. Diamond edged blades that handle the job usually cost 50.00 US and you run thru them quickly due to the sheer numbers of ironstone concretions that must be sawed. Sooo one of the methods used by some is to break with hathcet, hammer, or if nuts are large, a sledge hammer. And there are alot of those big ones that require the sledge hammer. When opal is struck (sometimes resulting in the painful and expensive smashing of a gem) the hammer and hatchet are laid aside and all Yowah opal nuts are then sawed while mining in that pocket. The processing of Yowah and Koroit nuts is labor intensive and the payoff pf finding nuts with opal is lean. Consequently, truly beautiful gems have a price tag. Rarity and beauty and supply and demand run the opal game. The analogy to convicts' work rings true when I hear myself say, "Yes, I did ten years in the Lightning Ridge opal fields and twelve in Yowah."Sounds like prison sentences doesn't it?