Yesterday I spent took a break from book writing to spend time in the attic sorting RVing clothes (for the upcoming dirt in Quarztsite Rock and Mineral shows) from a little-more-cleaned-up outfits for the Tucson Gem Shows in February. I was pulling some photo images for use in my blog, and finding individual unique looking specimens of rough Yowah and Koroit opal for my books. I am constantly reorganizing what I haul in my car from place to place on the rock and gem track. I have stashes here and there at places I regularly stop at so that there is always something I can do, book to write, talk to give, seminar to teach or a chunk of rock to polish. Jars get broken, plastic containers get skuzzy,  and boxes split and have to be redone.  So stack em and pack em was the name of the day.

Had a good customer give me my kinda gift… an opal. It is from Africa and looks good enough to eat. A shere shaped white opal that piles upinside the small half shell like opalized whip c ream with clear crystal windows into the froth here and there. The rainbow spectrum of collrs in the whitest of white is lovely. I am used to seeing the dark chocolate centered variety that are quite beautiful but this one is refreshing to see and acts like, I know it sounds crazy, but it acts like a cleansing of the palate, as if looking at opals were like consuming gourmet food! This Yowah opal field gal finds Ethiopian, altho a volcanic form of opal, to be breath taking. And at my age takin’ breaths is real important…oh oh I wonder if the fact my birthday was yesterday had anything to do with “age” comment?

The trouble with opal mining is there is so much  dirt mixed with the opals and so little time to separate the two. I do that days and then tackle the other commodity…words, at night. There is so much to say and share about opals and the life to those who care. So I spend any free time working my other mine, my word mine! I work it with taking jpegs  and slides, and writing blogs, and in my books.  Well with my car broken down here in USA, I am at the  computer working on four books: Opals Win Some Lose Some, and on a book about cutting Yowah opal maybe to be called Dirty Little Secrets About Cutting Yowah Opal, Fancy Pattern Opal of Queensland, and Smoke gets in Your Eyes Cookbook. The writing comes easy to me but putting it together electronically… well that is still a learning curve. Plus putting information out there that is both useful AND entertaining ….well that hurts my brain!

There’s nothing glamorous about your alternator failing you on highway 405 South at rush hour in LA. Somehow, my mind interprets mechanical failure on a bush track differently. Afterall, you may spot a show of opal in the dirt or meet one wonderful albeit crazy old Aussie bushie because of it as you take one challenging step at a time to get yourself moving again.

On a US freeway with cars screaming past, a cell phone in your pocket, AAA minutes from your rescue, it is not the same. Breaking down here  is an inconvenience, a major expense and plain ass boring. I tried to get a yarn out of the AAA driver about his life, or his philosophy of it, and all I got was a sales pitch to get me to take the car to his friend a guy who can he said, “Fix it good for you. ” I replied, “No, he won’t fix it for me since I only have $50.00 in my pocket. which means that you will just barely get paid for the tow if you take me too far.” Boy, did that stop all conversation.

Around the opal fields in the Land Down Under, that $50.00 in my pocket would buy a number of beers to slake the thirst of bush travelers who stop to give me a tow or a ride to the next town even if it were a hundred kilometers away. The garage there more than likely would be called Smash Repairs (instead of body shop) and a brother-in-law of the owner would fix me right up. I probably could trade opal partly for the work or give a promise to send the cash later. Hell, they most likely would surprise me by having heard of me…that crazy Yankee Sheila who mines opal!
Australia’s small population and bush telegraph system (gossip and yarn telling) make all this possible. OR I could camp on the roadside for days as I always take food, water, sleeping bag, a billy to boil up tea, matches, a torch(flashlight), insect repellant, and toilet paper and shovel. At any rate, out there the bush sounds are soothing, the pace is slower and less frantic. A whole richness of life thing happpens out there. Every bit of travail is a new chapter in my own personal adventure book that is my life.

But here, in the frantic must-have-lots-of-money-to-throw-at-any-problem style of life or clog another artery, I can’t reach inside and calm myeself, or even smile that watch-me-beat-this grin. Yeah, I get down in the mouth, too. Of course, three days before I was broke down on Interstate 10 with a broken timing belt. Even here in USA, my car is always loaded with opal rocks, opal books, and yes, the sleeping bag, water, food, torch but no insect repellant. The insects have the good sense here in “civilization” to get away from the poisonous, polluted terrain where Man builds his elbow to elbow nests.

Of course a lot of this “attitude” today may also be coming from the fact that one week before the breakdown on highway10, I limped from LA to Phoenix with a boiling radiator that my son Ron came down from Mayer, Az to replace with a new one. Son Ray in LA has the broke down beast in his garage in LA in parts trying to get the alternator out to replace it for me.God Bless my sons. They learned in the bush of Australia to build a carburator with a log and a piece of string…but evidently logs don’t cut it with radiators, timing chains, and alternators.

On a lighter note, I must say those souls I got to talk with on the Buckeye, AZ timing chain problem were nearly as helpful and interesting as bushies. The mechanic was honest and didn’t skin me for the timing chain and the AAA driver told a good story. With an affectionate smile, he spoke of his brother who also seems to turn his back on the “conventional” way of life over here and is an avid desert rat. Dave the AAA guy even drove by and stopped the next day to see me and wish me well as I optimistically repacked my now repaired Honda ready to continue on to LA and experience the alternator fiasco.

Hey, this is all just part and parcel of my chosen gypsy life on the road. Nell tells me to quit my whinjin” and get over it!

I awoke to the sound of wind gusting and tin flapping. An occasional clunk of wood dropping against wood punctuated my waking haze. The wind gusted with short breaths as though a man laboring up hill and giving a once in awhile long sigh. I peeked out the window. The branches of the trees jiggled their taunting dance like kids shaking their bums,” na na nanana no mining for you today.” the tempo began to pick up and  the blowing wind took on an assailant’s characteristics. The big bad wolf was blowing my house down! Later, the sky was overcast with the smell of rain in the air as I stood there in my nightshirt, holding my warm and soothing cuppa, and contemplating what I was to do today if not dig. In Yowah it is not all hot blazing sun and dozens of black flies in your sweat stung eyes.

Ironstone boulder opals are mined in the state of Queensland, Australia. Aboriginals say it is the rainbow that fell from the sky. The old time opal miners of late 1800s and early 1900’s loaded their wheelbarrows with tools and provisions in the town of Charleville. They walked, pushing those barrows,  hundreds of kilometers into the harsh, arid  bush of Queensland to prospect for gem opal. What they found was ironstone and tons of it in many shapes and forms.  Only rarely did they find opal hiding within the ironstone. The iron fist of Mother Nature had to be pried open with sledge hammer, pick, hatchet, or saw before she released her fallen rainbows to the lucky, the clever, the persistent.

Barbara McCondra is wearing the white shirt and the Yowah opal mining sweat bandana. Opal historian Barbara Moritz is the bejeweled one. We are having a fizzy cordial (a carbonated version of kool aid) in opal miner Johnny Kovac’s camp. Johnny is the featured miner in Rena Briand’s book Coober Pedy White Man in a Hole written in the 1970s. Johnny has been mining in Yowah for many years now. Moritz is an author and opal field historian from Lightning Ridge New South Wales. Read on for the bushies’ Christmas part.

Out of range of the camera lens (you’ll just have to take my word for it) are yards of gossamer cobwebs that Johnny had spray painted silver for the Christmas holidays. That is festive decorating Yowah opal field style! Happy Holidays, Mate!