In this whirlwind edition the GO bro's are so sick of chasing potch that they have a smash at pillarbashing only to be reminded of how generally unrewarding crawling around on their guts and finding next to nothing can be..

4 days and about 30 odd hours of pillarbashing our claim with a jackpick produces copious amounts of potch (coloruless, low value opal) with a few surprises.. Just enough to keep us digging, who knows if it's good or bad until we exhaust the area.. Not an easy job, but hopefully rewarding in the end..

 

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:

 

It's late August and the Grace Opal boys push on with our plan to ream a shaft to make it big enough to get our machine down. With the peril of hard grey billy rocks and huge old machinery breakdowns, nothing is guaranteed.. Progress sees us optimistic enough to sink a hole in the line we are hoping will be productive, what we bottom on is very encouraging to say the least! No fortunes made this trip but rest assured Grace Opal is committed to documenting the first fully fledged multi million dollar opal find on youtube.. LOL. This video is now hosted on the Young Guns Outback Opal Hunters YouTube channel!

 

 

It's early July 2022, the Grace Opal brothers venture up to God's country to see what we can achieve in our quest to find enough opal to retire and go opal mining / gardening and fishing (when it's 45c in the desert).

In this video we find spectacular opalised shells as featured in our last video, progressing through to the painstaking decision to slice one for inlaid doublet pendants and cut the other into a classic solid crystal opal cabochon. It’s never easy as opal is as unpredictable as the vagary’s of ancient moisture. Fortunately we manage to eek in a beautiful stone in spite of some threatening inclusions and a rapidly diminishing super gem bar of colour across the top. All up, very happy with the finished result! Hopefully we share a few useful tips for old school lapidary methods. Thanks for watching!