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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
This is a collection of anecdotes about the realities of day-to-day living on the fields. Things other authors I’ve read may have included here and there, but hadn’t focused on in quite the same way. And other things no one else I’ve read has ever thought to mention. And then seeing some recipes from folks whose names you can find on maps of the fields adds even more to the sense that this book is indeed the real thing.
Kudos “Nell”…!
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.

Sand tits form attached to an ironstone biscuit band. The biscuit band is a seam of ironstone laying in the sandstone and clay levels. The ironstone sometimes has opal lines and pools within it.
The brown ferruginous sandstone formations look like little miniature stalactites hanging from an ironstone biscuit band in clay. The sand tits’ ironstone has a more sandy consistency than do the hard ironstone nuts. And the tits have a yellow ochre, thin limonite colored exterior skin. There can be more horizontal lines of opal in a tit besides at the join to the ironstone band. One theory is that this formation is the result of annelids that are little wormlike, segmented creatures that bored into the clay bed of ancient sandy sea floors. Most must be contour cut with a dremil tool in order to cut into stones.