Day one, fly to Coobs and get out to Dead Horse for a quick 4 inch drill after an old friend
who found 30 years ago, no joy.
Day two, head to Donna's Rush to chase potch, and more potch, with a few small but pleasant surprises, enough to warrant another day.
Day three, continue chasing bloody potch with the jackpick and drill, my arms feel as though they're about to spontaneously detach, a few lovely but small gems to show for it.
On the fourth and final day, extremely fatigued from manual digging (I'm not exactly 'work hard' these days) and only a few possible hours to find something worthwhile, I head down an old haunt on Olympic where I knew the slide produced good colour decades ago.
The drives in the first shaft are only 40 feet long, blasted shut to the top level, I ascend and devour an amazing, if cool CK's Bakery steak and mushroom pie.
This is it, my last flourish of energy before heading back to Adelaide early day five..
Well what do you know.. BIG GEMS!
Watch the full adventure HERE:
In early December 2020, our mining company was prospecting on the Donna's Rush opal field about 50 kilometres north of Coober Pedy Australia.
Donna's Rush is a field named in honor of John and Yoka Dunstan's late daughter. I knew her a little personally and can attest to what an amazing person she was, she certainly brightened the day of anyone she interacted with and is very much missed by all who knew her, not least her family.
So with that in mind, it is fitting that some of the most beautiful opal we have ever found has been from the relatively small field of Donna's Rush.
This particular day we winched into a mine that had been dug recently with a tunelling machine with little trace left behind. I tried out a battery powered drill we spent over a thousand dollars trying to see if it was feasible, you can see in the video the small holes it made before the battery overloaded and cut out. Turns out it's too soon for that tech, we will have to stick with 240 volts and elbow grease for the time being.
Just as we had almost finished checking the entire claim, i found some small 'feeders' of trace in a patch of beautiful opal level (the chocolatey weathered sandstone around the opal in the video), and as I was cutting them out, it was very fortunate that a few crumbly chips fell away from the pipe, exposing the end as seen in the video. This piece will be for sale at our mining companies accounts following: