In this adventure we have the tipper dump moved by the famous outback opal hunter Justin Lang and his mining partner Jared. We fix the wobbly tipper pulley we’ve had for nigh on 30 years, and I head off to Dead Horse to see if I can improve our companies lagging fortunes with some pillarbashing. Its neck and neck between slow and steady earth moving (opal mining) and opportunistic scouting for bits and pieces in old claims (pillarbashing).. Watch to see how this round pans out! #australianopal #cooberpedy #adventure #opal #gemstonejewelry #opalmining #howtoopalmine #cooberpedyopal

It’s early December 2021 and the Grace Opal brothers (Lochy and Shannon) AKA World Class Opal and Kimberley Opal respectively, try out the smallest mass manufactured cutting head on the market. With no idea whether it will work or be effective, we take it down our East Pacific claim. It seems to work well, and we noodle a few nice stones in the old mullock and pick a few scrappy shell bits out in between. What we don’t show is all the digging in between where there is nothing. But that would be very boring.. A week goes by like lighting and the days feel like minutes in such engrossing work. We found good shells a couple of years ago in the top level and have been picking around trying for more for months to no avail. Towards the end of the trip however, a chunk of sandstone in a pillar above where Shannon has been operating the cutter has a crack in it, I decide to lever it down to make it safe. In the video you can see the small pocket of shells that was immediately behind the chunk of loose ground, and in the middle, a full shell! Watch to the end to witness what many opal purists would consider sacrilege (slicing up a full shell) but man oh man, just wait to see the jewelry we make from it if all goes well…

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: