A gem collector’s delight, a jeweler’s inspiration, a museum’s prize display…these opals are rarely spotted in real time reality. The web sites picture them but do not own most of them as very few miners get them in their claims. So photos that appear in books or other’s we pages get copied and used and reused as eye candy on the site. 

Images of gem centered Yowah and Koroit opal centered nuts are infrequent too because the miners and owners tend to keep them secret. The Germans and the Swiss have been privy to viewing more of them than most because of the interest they showed very early in the acquisition of gem centered opal nuts of Queensland, Australia.

Not a true nut, these ironstone concretions have a nutlike look. Thousands of Yowah and Koroit nuts have to be sawn before a solid opal center reveals itself. This type of formation just does not manifest in the ironstone nutbands of the Yowah opal fields in quantity and hundreds of those that do must be found before the truly rare super gem center is found! 

This is a subject rarely covered in the information available out in cyberspace or in the written and published opal books and articles. I will be putting up more pictures and information on this valuable gem in the next two weeks. Keep checking back.
 

Nope not just my cookbook or Fire in a Plain brown Wrapper but my personal collection of opal books. Write me at mccondra@parchedearthopals.com and tell me which one you are looking for. I will be moving again and i just do not want to cart them about or store them anymore. Time to find them new homes. And the best part is I’m not trying to make alot of money off them…just lighten up my moving load

azvinnie

Boulder Opal Council

To purchase book go to www.outbackgems.com and click on ebay store.

www.outbackgems.com   This is my son Ron Vil’s site (formerly known as one of the Yankee brothers in Lightning Ridge)His Ebay store link will take you to where you can can purchase my cookbook.

check out my new old town life

http://parchedearthopals.blogspot.com/

and this site www.bigbugstation.com 

Author and illustrator, Barbara McCondra, worked in the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay Alaska before heading Down Under to buy a black opal. Twenty five years later she still hunkers down around campfires  with miners fevered of eye and wild of heart who share their secrets, dream their dreams, and laugh at frustration. The food she cooked in outback makeshift kitchens gave her energy to labor seventy feet below ground with jack hammer and shovel. The companionship shared in those dirt floor kitchens gave her heart  to continue living the opal life. The people of the outback, the energy of the bush, the thrill of the hunt for opal and her ability to bring it alive to the reader is found within the pages of this cookbook.  She has already published the book Fire in a Plain Brown Wrapper and numerous articles for Rock and Gem Magazine in the USA and Metal Stone and Glass Magazine in Australia.The cookbook is in the mail to the printers. It will retail for 14.95 USD but is being offered for sale at a prepublication price of 10.00USD plus 2.00USD postage. within USA. The printers promise a four week turnaround. Send purchase price plus postage to Paypal account mccondra@parchedearthopals.com 8.5 x 11 inches and 70 pages in black and white with characatures and cartoons of the locals and the life and times of mining in Lightning Ridge.

First two frames show the sand tit as hangs from ironstone seam band. Last frame is of a sandtit that has been contour plished and cut into an opal stone. Arrows show the opalized split of the tit away from the ironstone biscuit band seam.