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: 

An old World Class Opal article from back in the day detailing an adventure to Mintabie, note the blasting, subsequent seam and resultant fine jewelry set ready for sale. 

We have been at this a while! 

Drilling and blasting underneath the opal level and subsequent jackpicking down of the opal level. Circa 1999.

The 'kingstone' I cut this stone into a nice larger oval and two smaller ones, then had them set into solid 18k gold as a pendant and earring set. 

The photos are pretty bad as I only had an analogue SLR camera but was happy to have documented the process!

Sadly both Australian federal and state Liberal governments have shut the township of Mintabie meaning this opal field, and the opportunities it afforded to adventurous, entrepreneurial pioneers and indeed the local indigenous people, is now virtually abandoned. 

Saddleworth was the archetypal shire, only largely bereft of the whimsical characters and warmth depicted in Tolkien’s work. Although to be fair, it did have its share of wonderful people. 

It was a post war relic, steeped in religiosity, but not all that spiritual. Really just a small village that existed to support the surrounding farming community and to otherwise navel gaze, or to gaze over the fence to criticize the neighbours, for little else to do. 

The judgemental gaze of so many old Methodists and Church of England parishioners is indelibly seared into my mind. In hindsight, it was probably well deserved disapproval as I was a well known terror around town.  

Around 1986 I was staying with my much older sister in Glenelg, a beach side suburb of Adelaide.

My two slightly younger nephews and I were madly exploring the nearby area, searching desperately for some mischief, and found the patawalonga river channel.

 The Patawalonga is a fully concrete river channel running for several kilometres where we roamed and found drain pipes to climb in full of spiderwebs and rubbish and several inches of water flowing.

I clearly remember balancing on the edge of the concrete slope trying to avoid slipping into the water when I spotted a white stone by itself beneath the 3 or four inches of flowing water. It had a familiar ‘opalescence’ to it. Drawing closer I detected a fleck of red, then green twinkling at me… ‘that's opal!’ 

I was incredulous, wading in,  I picked up the stone and marvelled at the large almost golf ball sized chunk of white based red and green opal. I didn't know it then, but it was what we call ‘pinfire red grey’ Although its name is inaccurate for much so named Coober Pedy material, as it is often not ‘grey’ at all, but porcelain white in base colour. Although not the most expensive of Australian opal, it is still very highly sought after for jewellery.

Standing amazed, looking around, I spotted another stone a bit farther upstream, and again, a decent chunk of the same opal! And another! and yet another.. Soon we were in a ‘patch’ where there were close to fifty or so decent size pieces of the opal scattered all around. My nephew recalls me demanding he find a container to fill up.

The opal was scattered 50 metres or so downstream from a footbridge, we assumed someone must have thrown it over the bridge. We will never know why, but certainly as kids, we didn't really care either.. 

This experience was to cement my fascination with opal.

 I had previously wondered if my destiny lay in the opal fields, now I knew it.