I learned how to cook on this!

Opals Win Some Lose Some ( about Yowah and Koroit Opals ) is finished as is Smoke Gets in Your Eyes a Lightning Ridge Opal Field Cookbook and so is all except the cover of Fancy Patterns Opal. I am half way through Do or Die Cutting a book on Cutting Yowah Opals. So although not digging opals I have been busy. the only sore muscles from these endevors is my glutemus maximus from all the sitting at the computer! Now the task is to raise the money to pay for the printing. Sometimes I think I would be better off just writing for magazines. There is no money up front there. But then I wouldn’t have an inventory of books for future sales, just the one time payment for the article. Decisions decisions. The old recluse miners of today, as I guess did their predecessors before them, always love the mining and the finding but then their headaches begin. Decisions on valuing, partnership splits, where to hide the opal, how to cut it, if to cut it…all decisions and worry. Exactly what most had gone Bush to avoid. None of it is easy.

 Yowah and Koroit were not my first love. I stared into a  Lightning Ridge black opal ring from age thirteen onwards. Owning it was the beginning. I was nearly 41 years old when I made my first trip to The Ridge and began to live the opal life.Writing this cookbook has brought back a wave of old stirrings…opal fever, adventure images, and adrenalin highs. I can smell the campfire at my tin shack, the stale beer and smoke of the pub where clay spattered thirsty miners filled my head with their tales of opal glory won and lost. So,  it takes me longer perhaps than most, to correct the errors my proof reading disclosed. I keep getting caught up in the memories instead of the correct hook direction of quotation marks. 

I hesitated to offend with a description of immigrants on the field. I changed the word “refugee” to “European”. I think I lost some of the feel of the time and the place and the people by doing that. I am going back today and putting it back. I don’ want to loose the authentic look and flavor of the opal fields, as seen through my eyes, by shooting for “politically correct”! I better stick to the spelling and puctuation and clarity of thought revisions.

A New York Agent said he got hooked and engrossed into the telling of my mini escapades and felt cheated because they were short and he wanted to knowmore of what happened to me. He is encouraging me to write who I was and what I did.  So, this cookbook with its excerpts of life in The Ridge and flavors of that life, is a springboard to a biography I guess.

Santa Fe jewelry designer, Janelle Benton, put together this setup of stones as an earrings design. It typifies the versatillity of Yowah and Koroit Boulder opal matrix stones. You can see why Yowah and Koroit opal have earned the title Inspiration Stone.

I renewed my drivers license, replaced the muffler on car and insured it so now am ready to hit the road again to sell some more rough for my ticket money to Australia. The car is packed to the brim including the passenger side seat. I have retrieved the now proof read copies of my soon to be printed cookbook. It helps to have those who know nothing of the opal life proof read for you because they point out what was confusing to them. When I get to LA, I will work on the corrections and print the master copy to send to the printers. I have been told to add a touch of color to the front cover. I need to play with how to color it. I think I have found printers that can help me with my planned series of books. It’s all about the money of course. Now off I go singing  Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again”

Sometimes the opal and ironstone combine in a way that looks like an object, a landscape, or a lifeform. This half of a Yowah nut looks like a penguin. Picture stones like this are collectible and most miners have one or two sitting on the shelf in their mining hut. This one is the size of my palm and has another half nut that matches it. There is no fire showing in the opal. So the opal that makes up the figure is called “potch” or “common opal”. This piece is still in the rough and has not been polished. I sawed two thousand Yowah nuts (yes, I counted them) and found only two picture stones.

Holy rocks! I have seen some beaut opals! Just like I thought, amidst the complaints of “no opal” are those who found their patch this year. Grawin black opal seam, a parcel of black Lambina, red on blacks hidden within a white sandstone tailings lump and other kaleidoscopic delights are amongst the opal vendors tables.Cheers, Barbara

Here I am still on the road again at the Tucson gem show. I come here not to sell or buy but to check out the opal market. The main part of the show gets going today and tomorrow so have seen only a bit of Yowah and Koroit opals at the stalls. The Queensland boulder opal blokes are complaining that the year was lean for them to produce any quantity of opal. they tell me Quilpie is flooded in and the Parroo River that you must cross to get to Yowah is rising. There are reports of much water in the Coocoran Lake around Lightning Ridge. I have heard these cries of no opal no opal many a time before. I aim to check out their validity here. It has been my experience in the past that there is always SOMEONE on opal. The key is to find out who and where they have it for sale and to get to them first! I only go to check out pricing and new discoveries or types of opal. There is a new book out this year hot off the presses. It is full of magic pictures and updated information. I will interview the publisher today and share info with you soon. Now off to the opal trenches of Tucson.