Missing the Australian Opal Wild Life

I used to live under a tree, up a tree, and in a tiny tin hut with a screened window but no doors so the mosies (what they call mosquitoes in Australia) dined on me nightly. When the Australian desert night got cold it was rrrreally cold and I wore seven layers of clothing plus three blankets and a space blanket, too to keep warm. At least, when it was that cold, there were no mosies. I had two separate friends give me old kerosene heaters to keep warm by but the fumes were just too much to tolerate. Plus I wouldn't dare to keep one running while I was asleep for fear of fire. In the warmer times, I would sometimes give a good mosquito poison spray upward in the camp, pull the covers over my head and listen to the rain of thousands of tiny mosie bodies falling dead onto my blanket. I lived like this because the opal fever had me. Dig by day for the treasure of outback Australia and sit around a campfire at night and swap stories of digging and finding opal. Maybe I should mention here that some black opals sell for $10,000per carat and more. I sold one of mine once for $6,000 per carat and it was a six carat stone. I erected a makeshift type of portable camp out of corrugated tin. This was the norm at Lightning Ridge, NSW Australia. That was the camp at Pigs Hill to which later a 1948 bus that used to store pig food was converted into sleeping quarters. I did the converting. During the big new rush known as The Coocoran I actually just camped under a tree sleeping with mosie net in the back of a nearly derelict old station wagon. The back down and head lay on it with the netting draped over and the darndest view of the southern hemisphere's starlight sky. Mining tools like pick and shovel and some spanners held the netting down as they lay upon the roof of the car. At another point in time of my 24 years in Australia, I lived with a love for a few years in his sort of like a tree house camp. I started this lifestyle when I was forty years old. I felt twenty. I am yearning to make my yearly trip back to the opal fields so I can feel twenty again because it always works that way. To see what I do and why I do it visit me at www.parchedearthopals.com