Opal Mining is Almost as Good as Sex..How I Got Hooked on It

The shaft''s entry way was a three foot wide circular hole drilled straight downward by a Calweld bucket auger drill rig fifteen years before. The sides had been washed in somewhat due to water erosion during the heavy downpours that alternated between times of drought in this dry dusty barren desert of New South Wales, Australia. We had thrown an eight inch thick log across the hole and through the last two rungs of seven, ten foot sections of iron hanging ladders. The prospecting ladders were hooked end to end dropping out of sight into the pitch-black depths below. It looked like the yawning mouth of Hell to me. I just knew it could swallow this Yankee sheila and I would never see the light of day again. I heard a muffled cooee from below and knew it was my turn to scramble down the rusty, flimsy, loosely hooked ladders into the bowels of Australia. Loose pebbles around the hole threatened to fling me, butt first, down the shaft and I heard the rocks rattle their way down the ladder. My mining helmet had household lighting wire attached to an auto taillight that was riveted to my helmet at one end while twitched to the posts of the 12 volt car battery at the other. I had fifty feet of wire coiled up and hanging from my waist with the other fifty lying coiled near the car unwinding as I descended. I was going opal gouging in an old timers'' mine in Lightning Ridge. I hoped to find something valuable that they had missed. Gouging and pillar tickling sounded like an exciting treasure hunt to me.The pillars are clay and sandstone level that the miners leave to hold up the roof as they burrow like rabbits through sedimentary rock levels laid down over 100 million years ago. The light near the top of the shaft began to fade but not before I could see how crumbly the walls of the shaft were. Lizards sat in niches looking at me as though I were mad and the poisonous redback spiders scurried from my white knuckled clamping of the rungs as I clambered downward in imitation of the strength and confidence of the seasoned miner who had preceded me. Ignoring the pounding in my ears and the shallow tight breaths I was taking, I resorted to my tried and true method of handling my fear when trying something new and different and dangerous. I imitated the movements and attitude of the fearless and knowledgeable. I figure if you move-like, talk-like, and dress-like, while you do-like the real thing you become the real thing. Today I was an opalminer. (Little did I realize that eighteen years later I would still be an opalminer!) Seventy feet of swinging ladder can make your knees shake and your calves quiver. I tried peering into the blackness below me as the light above became an ever-decreasing halo overhead. I could just barely make out a form sort of hunkered down out of the way of the rattling rain of loose rocks my clumsy boots banging against rotted sandstone was dislodging and precipitating. The three foot wide shaft allowed me to stop and lean back against the wall for a rest and a moment to calm my fears as the great pretender Barbara McCondra got scared before I again assumed the stance and stride of a fearless adventurer and finished the climb. My miner guide reached over and plugged the short light lead plug hanging from my helmet into the female end of the electrical wire coiled and hanging from my waist. The mine lit up revealing rotting timbered props slightly bowed from the weight they bore on one side and what looked like an immense pile of collapsed sandstone roof on the other. I felt the cool clamminess of the mine touch my skin and the tiniest tickle of panic played across it. An Aussie with a touch of opal fever glinting out of his eyes was grinning at me. He handed me a gouging pick and said,"Let''s go knock out some gem black opal." To my horror he didn''t head down the drive (tunnel) on the right but instead crawled over the tons of sandstone heaped to our left. We were here to check out the older workings not the more recent if you can call fifteen years ago recent mining."There''s been quite a bit of pressure on this country," he mumbled. I hurried to not lose sight of him. We turned left and found we were standing beneath another shaft that was blocked up top by thick logs laying side by side across the opening. The pattern made by the sunlight filtering through was eerie and wonderful at the same time. I felt myself step through some time altering place. In my heart I felt that this is what time travel would feel like, dark and heavy with silence and the smell of ancientness. The scents that assailed my nostrils were of the moist earth, the damp clay, and the mildew of quiet, undisturbed time.This particular shaft was of another time. It was rectangular in shape and you could see the niches the old timers had gouged out along both sides of the shaft all the way up. They used these for toe and hand holds to climb into and out of the mine. The old boys sure did it a lot tougher than we were. The shaft we''d descended down via the hanging ladders had been made with a drill rig. We were heading into the area mined nearly a hundred years ago. You could see the hand pick strokes and pokes in the walls and roof whereas the area at the base of the circular shaft showed jack pick marks made with either electrically run or compressor air driven jackhammers. The area we were exploring had had a lot of years to dry out and the clay walls of the drive (tunnel) showed it. They were fretted meaning huge chunks had dried and split away and fallen into the walkway making our path more difficult and dangerous. A very large piece could wedge you so tightly that although not crushed, you would suffocate because your lungs could not expand. That''s why I prefer to go gouging with a Mate as they can pull you out of strife. The roof overhead showed a lovely pinkish sandstone under the lights provided by the car taillights in our helmets. In the opalfields, pink sandstone is considered a good sign of a chance for gem opal. Of course, so is a wavy roof, a hard flat roof, or a rotten sandstone (meaning soft) roof. Contradictory? You bet. That''s the way of the opal game. Opal is where you find it. My partner chose the nearer of two tunnels radiating from the shaft to enter. We now had to stoop. The old boys had to move all dirt by hand shoveling backwards a number of times and hauling the discarded dirt up the shafts hand over hand or using a hand cranked winch called a windlass. The less dirt they shoveled the less to haul away so the drives were short and tight. We were looking for what the miners before us had missed. Black opal nobbies are little nodules that are like raisins in raisin bread with a whole lot of dough to be moved. Gougers use flat- honed, blade-like picks not pointed ones for chip chipping away at the clay. We all wait to feel and hear that special chink that tells us a nobby has been hit. "Thinking about it gets you nothing," snapped my gouging partner and the truth of this was hit home with ring of his pick on opal. Firing electric green color at us was an eye of opal chipped open by his pick. It was with that spark that the lust for opal was kindled in me and that craving, that need to hunt and unearth for myself, the Queen of Gems, to this day still burns in my breast! The heightened sense of being alive, the rush of blood to our heads, the quickening of our breath, was an addictive thrill. As we pried the fiery gem out of the wall with a screwdriver and fondled it in the light of our helmets, we speculated on what others may have found before us. We hoped there were more stones to be had. We pondered whether we dared move much dirt to find this one''s bigger brothers, and we shared a newly rolled smoke.We turned off the lights and sat in the darkness listening to our hearts beat and trying to hear what the mine was saying as the glowing tip of our cigarette was passed between us. We could hear hunks falling off the walls, a popping sound as clay moved suddenly due to pressure from the seventy feet of sandstone above our head, and an explosive thud as a bit of roof faraway down other tunnels peeled from overhead. These were not good sounds. Should we go? Should we stay? How hot was the opal fever burning? How lucky could we be today? I know I cheated and put one of my writings that is in the archives on my website www.ParchedEarthOpals.com but it explains why I did what I did for 22 years in case you were wondering.