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INDEX
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The McCondra Report: Yowah Day
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A morning in Yowah begins with jumping out of the cot, turning on the shower, plugging in the jug, and stepping outside to grin into the Queensland, Australian sunrise. The shower needs to run awhile until the ground pipes full of cooled down water can
again flow with hot artesian well water that begins its flow from the borehead only five blocks away. The Yowah well was sunk in 1911 which allowed the old time miners to mine this opal field, drought or no drought. Only a couple of years ago the bore
water ditches to each camp and house were replaced with pipes providing unlimited hot showers for sore and aching muscles. However, in the summer, the water remains so hot that a cooling tank is used at each home or else a waiting period before popping
into the tub must be observed.
Aussies love their electric jug to heat the water for a cuppa. The coils in the bottom of the jug bring the water to the boil as they say, and quite quickly, too. Most every home and motel in Australia is equipped with one. Since the bore water has a
distinctive sulfuric odor, we let the water aerate for a day before using in a drink. The water in the shower is running hot when the rich-in-minerals, rotten egg smell wafts into the kitchen.
After brekkie (breakfast) usually a couple of googs (eggs) and a snag (sausage) or bubble and squeak (leftovers from the night before fried in with a lot of leftover mashed potatoes on toast) or lowfat stewed tomatoes (tomahtoes) on toast, my opal
cutter friend, Gwen, shouts to me to have a look as she flips on the halogen lights in the opal sorting room and spreads out the gems freshly popped off their dopsticks (the small sticks that roughly shaped opals are waxed onto in order to handle the
opals with deftness in the shaping and polishing process). As usual their variety, color, and personality keeps us gasping with delight and surprise. These Yowah nut opals, a form of ironstone boulder opals, capture our interest as we move them around and
make their colors and patterns dance in the light. Just the day before, they were buried in the ironstone and looked only like brown rock. Now they are gems with every color of the rainbow twinkling back at us, displayed in never-ending, ever changing
patterns; little apostrophes of bright electric color, swirls in concentric circles, speckles of fire, and bubbles of crystal opal.
To us opal junkies, opal is a time altering drug and eventually it dawns on us that there is more opal in the dirt to be dug, and in the "rough" buckets to be processed and cut if a new batch of gems are to be here to enjoy tomorrow morning. We sort and
price the opal and Gwen retreats to her cutting room with a shout to remind me to sign up for an appointment with the flying doctor on Friday, which is his usual day to fly in from Charleville 400 miles away. I march off to the truck with pick and shovels
in my arms quoting loudly my marching verse, "I hurt in the dirt as I flirt with Ladyluck. More for the love of the opal than a chase for the buck!" This I chant in sing song instead of Disney's Seven Dwarfs song, "HI Ho HI Ho" which I grew tired of
years ago when mining black opal in Lightning Ridge, Australia.
I spend the next couple hours shoveling dirt into a trummel that turns using a little Mitsubishi motor . The trummel is made of heavy duty metal mesh and the dust flys as I process the dirt by shaking the dirt off the nuts (small ironstone concretions)
that are in the old stow dirt previously pulled out of an opencut mine. I empty the nuts, sticks, gravel, sandstone chunks and whatever other rubbish that couldn't pass through the mesh into old used 20 gallon grease buckets. The buckets are hefted
onto the back of the truck, the fine dust that has built up under the trummel has to be shoveled off to the side and a new batch of dirt shoveled into the trummel once again.( This sounds as though silent invisible others are doing all this hefting and
shoveling instead of yours truly ---NOT). If the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, even the hardy, persistent black bushflies that annoy all my facial orifices give up.
The buckets of nuts need to be washed clean of dirt that has caked on them and wasn't knocked clean by the trummeling. This is done back at camp with one of several methods.
ONE: I could spread the contents on an old bushbed bedframe (consists of frame and metal mesh) and hose down before sorting
TWO: Sort out the nuts without washing and perhaps miss some
THREE: Do a thorough wash in a garden sized cement mixer for ten minutes. I then hose off and shovel the gem hopefuls onto a sorting table that has a trickle of water running over it to facilitate gleaning the rubbish and begin the presort on the
actual nuts. This sorting process takes another couple hours depending if you have help. It is the custom in Yowah that if friends stop by for a visit that they help sort while talking . We break for a cuppa or have "tea" which can mean a meal.( You
notice that the friends have shown up
after all the shoveling in the dust.)
The hospitality in Yowah knows no bounds. The town is only three or four blocks long and we all know each other or soon will. The population runs from twenty to two hundred depending upon the time of year and the number of tourists camping.
After lunch Gwen attempts to saw some of my granddaddy sized nuts on the large saw outside under a tree. We turn the water up to a roaring spray and she stands there soaked head to toe determined to find my fortune in that huge boulder sized nut.
Previously a magnificent golf ball sized crystal opal had been smashed to smithereens by breaking a football sized nut open with a chipping hatchet . We were trying not to take any chances with similar looking nuts. The saw wasn't up to the task so we
bash the nut with chipping hammers anyway until the opal center is exposed--- nothing but potch in this center. (Common opal that shows no play of color). As usual no fortune. However, common opal centers are a great sign as most nuts are filled with
clay, ironstone, or are hollow therefore, solid opal centers mean it is possible a gem centered nut can occur. This is the equivalent carrot dangling on a stick in Yowah, especially if there are a few broken nuts in the bucket showing traces of color.
The sorted nuts are carried to the "cracking heap". It is here that the tedious job of breaking open all nuts and parts of nuts that have potch showing is done. Did I say tedious? Let me say TEDIOUS.
These nuts were all won out of old stow dirt from the 1890s (the throwaways back then). The driveways of Yowah are paved with empty cracked nuts. Thousands are cracked before you get a cutter unless you are working underground and have struck a patch
of nuts that are carrying opal (then you saw them all). When cracking, nuts that you have a hunch about are set into a "to be sawed" bucket. Mostly, you do not have a clue and you smack one filled with opal. If the break is clean, the rush is incredible.
If the break isn't clean, the shower of crystal chips is an agony. The pain is lost in continuation of the tedious task. A glorious win is celebrated with partners being informed and a cuppa is had as reward. This is accompanied with admiration by all
as the gem is passed from hand to hand and its value assessed. Of course, a great deal of opal diving is done and stories are recounted of past triumphs or annihilated gems mourned and remembered.
Whether your nuts have been trummeled from old stow, jackhammered out the underground walls of a mine, or fossicked off old heaps and old workings in the fossicking area ( newly set aside for tourists and locals alike), we all get stuck into nutcracking,
be it for a hobby or for very serious mining. The sound of nuts cracking can be heard somewhere in Yowah anytime the sun is out. What you may have heard about Yowah ----Nuts cracking nuts! Is true.
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Copyright, 1997 by Barbara McCondra
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Barbara McCondra is a popular lecturer who travels widely on speaking
tours. Her son Ron Vil, who mined with her for many years, is the
owner of Outback Gems, specializing in Australian Opal including,
Lightning Ridge and Yowah Nut Boulder opal. They were featured in the
June 1995 issue of Lapidary Journal. You can contact Barbara through
Outback Gems, voice and/or Fax 602-846-0407 or email at
RedonBlack@AOL.com.
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