I awoke to the sound of wind gusting and tin flapping and banging. an occasional clunk of wood dropping against wood punctuated through my waking haze. The wind gusted with short breaths as though of a man laboring up hill and then gave a once in awhile long sigh. The branches of the trees jiffled their taunting dance like kids shaking their bums, "Na nanana, no mining for you today." The tempo began to pick up and the blowing wind took on an assailant's characteristics. Eeeek. The big bad wolf was blowing my house down!. The sky was an angry overcast grey. As I stood there in my nightshirt holding my cuppa tea in my hand, the goosepimples rose in the cool breeze. I realized there might be no sun today. No sun to sort opal by. It was my partners Sabbath and he we wouldn't meet at the mine to dig today. So sorting is what I had planned. Well, anyway it takes no sunlight to shovel rocks out of my chicken coop. I had stored a mixture of nuts, sandstone, gravel, and assorted clayballs that all came out of a trommel a few years ago. It was time to haul it out and wash it and sort it. It was the ironstone nuts that I was after. I could see ironstone easy enough on any day. My borrowed Ford ute ( a Ford that is built like a Ranchero ) was parked out front. A mining vehicle used usually at Koroit a nearby opal field, it rust and dings and miles of wearing mining years heavily scarred its boy not unlike myself. Bit it has the heart of a rocket also not unlike myself. So if I was such a rocketheart I had better rug up (dress warmly) and get out there and start emptying that old chicken coop. (the photo is of a tree trunk statue of a female opal miner in my yard in Yowah)
To see what I do and why I do it go to www.ParchedEarthOpals.com or www.outbackgems.com
