THE OPAL DAYS (2)
Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 11:59 pm
THE OPAL DAYS (2)
A snapshot of Coober Pedy in the mid sixties
&
The Jeweler’s Shop mini miracle
The weather had been really hot that year and the town water tank went more or less dry .
one week both Gunther’s and my joint water allowance was restricted to 6 gallons of water; just for drinking. To add to the woes the water truck that was carting water from somewhere had broken down. At least before this we were allowed 20 to 30 gallons a fortnight between us if I remember right.
I remember we went down to the tank one day and they were cleaning it out while it was more or less empty. We were just a little shocked to see the number of drowned cats and dead crows that were fished out of it – I was later in my gold mining days to become quite familiar with fishing out parts of dead roo’s from the wells we used to get water from. Strangely enough I can’t remember ever getting ill from drinking bad water.
In later years they built a couple of distillation plants to help ease the water problems but neither were very successful. Eventually they discovered unlimited amounts of good bore water and these days there is no problem.
For the best part of the first couple of years at Coober Pedy we had no transport, if we wanted to go somewhere we walked – we were real battlers just struggling to survive between the odd small parcel we found, and when desperate we would go down in the old mines and noodle to keep the wolf from the door. Some of the old drives deep underground were hundreds of meters long and hooked up with many other old mines and once you got away from the shaft it was pitch black. There was one occasion when our carbide light went out and couldn’t be relit,
we crawled around if the darkness for what seemed hours before we eventually stumbled onto the right shaft where our rope was.
It was about this time when as usual funds were getting really low that we had a bit of luck. We were still living out on the flat in an old brush hut and it was as hot as hell, we’d wait until a tiny sliver of shade appeared mid afternoon to get a bit of relief (there wasn’t a tree in sight). Then if enough energy could be summoned up in the late afternoon we’d have a go somewhere to try and find a bit of opal.
This particular afternoon we decided to try our luck at the Jeweler’s Shop; an old field on the edge of town. The ground was really shallow at one end so we decided we’d both sink a shallow shaft each; but reckoned we were wasting our time.
I cleared away a couple of inches of loose dirt where I intended sinking my shaft, then swung my pick into the solid ground and immediately heard a sound like breaking glass. Thinking it must be rubbish of some sort I looked down at where I’d swung the pick and a lovely piece of red opal was glinting at me.
We soon realized that I had found a really shallow seam of opal, and it wasn’t crazed as you’d normally expect opal that had been so close to surface would be.
We quickly pegged a lease in case we were onto something good (in those days the mining rules were pretty easy going – but got a lot tougher in later years.
Meanwhile the seam kept going and spreading while getting slightly deeper. The opal itself was quite thin but really good colour and thickened up a little as it went.
We were just starting to think we were onto something really big then just as suddenly as it appeared it disappeared and despite sinking a few more shallow shafts we never found another piece. But we did get some really nice opal form the original patch which gave our meager funds a small boost.
©T. E. Piggott
A snapshot of Coober Pedy in the mid sixties
&
The Jeweler’s Shop mini miracle
The weather had been really hot that year and the town water tank went more or less dry .
one week both Gunther’s and my joint water allowance was restricted to 6 gallons of water; just for drinking. To add to the woes the water truck that was carting water from somewhere had broken down. At least before this we were allowed 20 to 30 gallons a fortnight between us if I remember right.
I remember we went down to the tank one day and they were cleaning it out while it was more or less empty. We were just a little shocked to see the number of drowned cats and dead crows that were fished out of it – I was later in my gold mining days to become quite familiar with fishing out parts of dead roo’s from the wells we used to get water from. Strangely enough I can’t remember ever getting ill from drinking bad water.
In later years they built a couple of distillation plants to help ease the water problems but neither were very successful. Eventually they discovered unlimited amounts of good bore water and these days there is no problem.
For the best part of the first couple of years at Coober Pedy we had no transport, if we wanted to go somewhere we walked – we were real battlers just struggling to survive between the odd small parcel we found, and when desperate we would go down in the old mines and noodle to keep the wolf from the door. Some of the old drives deep underground were hundreds of meters long and hooked up with many other old mines and once you got away from the shaft it was pitch black. There was one occasion when our carbide light went out and couldn’t be relit,
we crawled around if the darkness for what seemed hours before we eventually stumbled onto the right shaft where our rope was.
It was about this time when as usual funds were getting really low that we had a bit of luck. We were still living out on the flat in an old brush hut and it was as hot as hell, we’d wait until a tiny sliver of shade appeared mid afternoon to get a bit of relief (there wasn’t a tree in sight). Then if enough energy could be summoned up in the late afternoon we’d have a go somewhere to try and find a bit of opal.
This particular afternoon we decided to try our luck at the Jeweler’s Shop; an old field on the edge of town. The ground was really shallow at one end so we decided we’d both sink a shallow shaft each; but reckoned we were wasting our time.
I cleared away a couple of inches of loose dirt where I intended sinking my shaft, then swung my pick into the solid ground and immediately heard a sound like breaking glass. Thinking it must be rubbish of some sort I looked down at where I’d swung the pick and a lovely piece of red opal was glinting at me.
We soon realized that I had found a really shallow seam of opal, and it wasn’t crazed as you’d normally expect opal that had been so close to surface would be.
We quickly pegged a lease in case we were onto something good (in those days the mining rules were pretty easy going – but got a lot tougher in later years.
Meanwhile the seam kept going and spreading while getting slightly deeper. The opal itself was quite thin but really good colour and thickened up a little as it went.
We were just starting to think we were onto something really big then just as suddenly as it appeared it disappeared and despite sinking a few more shallow shafts we never found another piece. But we did get some really nice opal form the original patch which gave our meager funds a small boost.
©T. E. Piggott