boulder opal

wishlists

my shopping bag

quick facts journey to the source journey through history journey to well-being


The earliest known opal artifacts, dating back to 4000 BC, were uncovered in a cave in Kenya last century by the archeologist Louis Leakey. When Australian opals appeared on the world market in the 1890's, the Hungarian mines spread the rumor that they were fakes, probably because gems with such brilliant fire had not been seen before. Stories abound about someone hunting jackrabbits and stumbling over an opal lying on the ground or fixing a broken wagon wheel only to find they were kneeling on a vein of opal. By 1923, the Eastern European opal mines were unable to compete with the high quality stones being produced in Australia and ceased production. The first discovery of opal in Australia is attributed to an eccentric German geologist, Professor Johannes Menge, who discovered greenish common opal about fifty miles north of Adelaide around 1840.	a happy accident hungarian opal Precious opal has been known since pre-Roman times, mined in the Carpathian Mountains near the village of Cervenica, an area once part of Hungary, but now in Eastern Slovakia. Beginning about 50 BC, opal was traded from its source down the Danube river to the Greek city of Corinth and from there to Rome. The only known source of opal -- of a pale milky hue -- deposits in the Carpathians were becoming depleted by the late 1800's. The discovery of significant precious opal deposits in Queensland, Australia, the first being around 1869 by gold panners, has been described as a 'happy accident' -- as were many opal field discoveries in Australia. queensland boulder opal; rough photo courtesy of house of tibara Commercial mining was slow to start though, in part because the first opals found were Queensland boulder opals. Unused to the new stone, initially gem cutters tried to remove the sturdy ironstone backing from the opal which only made it crack. So, while the first registered boulder opal mining lease in Australia was issued in 1871, near the town of Quilpie, it was not until 1875 that Herbert Bond made the first serious attempt to establish the emerging industry when he leased several mines in southern Queensland. Proceeds from these mines enabled him to establish a company in London in 1879 to promote boulder opals -- necessary because they were totally unknown in Europe. Unfortunately, he found them to be unsalable and his opal mining operations in Australia were temporarily abandoned.
Playing a key role in Aboriginal Dreamtime ( Alcheringa ), the Rainbow Serpent, a fundamental energy that joins north and south 'dreamtimes' of Australia, appears in Aboriginal rock art going back 40,000 years. Neither male or female, it is said to command the powers of creation and destruction. The Rainbow Serpent is known over most of Australia, but the name differs from one aboriginal group to another. Dreamtime: a collection of events beyond living memory which shaped the physical, spiritual, and moral world; the era in which these occurred; an Aborigine's consciousness of the enduring nature of the era. "Aboriginal people believe that they have lived in Australia since the beginning of all things and archeologists have dated the human occupancy of Australia back many tens of thousands of years to the time when [it] was part of a huge landmass...connected with New Guinea and parts of Asia. This has been named Gondwanaland and identified with the ancient legendary continent of Mu." Mudrooroo "Aboriginal culture provides an extraordinary model of time, subtle, ambiguous and diffuse. The Dreamtime or Alcheringa is a sacred time, a Great Time, qualitatively different from ordinary or chronological time. Whereas the Western mind sees past or present or future, the Aboriginal sees them as merging -- Dreamtime as always imminent in the land; the wallaby at the waterhole now, this Wednesday or last Wednesday or next Wednesday (i.e. always existing at the totemic waterhole in Dreamtime Wednesday)." "Origins of the Days of the Week," BBC While the Dreaming conjures up the notion of a sacred, heroic time of the indefinitely remote past, such a time is also, in a sense, still part of the present...[It] is that of a sacred, heroic time long, long ago when man and nature came to be as they are; but neither "time" or "history" as the 'civilized' world understands them is involved in this meaning... The Dreaming, an Australian World View The Dreaming stories teach moral values which are passed down to other generations. They teach many things such as: * the importance of harmony with the environment, * how the world was created, * the code for living, * responsibility for the land, * their culture, * instructions on how people should act. "Ground... we hang on. This earth for us. Just like mother, father, sister." Bill Neidjie, Story About Feeling "White man got no dreaming, Him go 'nother way. White man, him go different, Him got road belong himself." "The Dreaming, an Australian World View" *Glimmerdream's Dreamtime* line of boulder opal jewelry is so-named to honor both the Dreamtime concept and the living source of its boulder opal.**	coils of the rainbow serpent Used in ceremonies and rights of passage by indigenous northern Queensland groups for thousands of years, boulder opal is considered a very spiritual stone, sometimes associated with the Rainbow Serpent -- in Aborigine belief a powerful protective 'energy grid' covering the Earth which has been described as "an agent of destiny" for Aboriginal people. rainbow serpent, creator of all According to Aboriginal activist Lorraine Mafi-Williams (1940-2001): "In our old way,...we call the energy grid Boamie, the sacred Rainbow Serpent, whose colors reflect the beauty of the Earth and sky, the rainbow. The multicolored coils of the Rainbow Serpent are reflected in the precious stones that are concealed in the Earth's crust." Australia's aboriginal people, "believe they have lived in Australia since the beginning of all things." Their belief system -- including their interconnectedness with the earth -- goes back beyond time, to the time of the Dreaming, a magical time every bit as real to them as conventional reality is to most of us. Echoing American history, the first European settlers in Australia used the Latin term terra nullius to describe the land: it was empty, unused -- a condition which became their justification for taking it. But to aborigines, as with Native Americans, the land is a source of food, medicine and clothing -- and much more -- it is what links all of its inhabitants and thus it is a source for, and a fully-fledged part of, the human soul. In a sense, they 'belong' to the land. In Aboriginal Mythology, Mudrooroo Nyoongah explains: "To the Aboriginal person, the entire universe is permeated with life -- it is a living, breathing biomass which has separated into families. There are families of stars, of trees and of animals, and they are connected to our human families. Our way of life is spiritual in that there is an interconnectedness, an interrelatedness with the earth and all existence, existence extending from the merely physical realms to the spiritual, encapsulated in the term 'the Dreaming.' The Dreaming is a continuous process of creation which began in the long ago period called the 'Dreamtime' when the physical features of the land were formed by creative beings who were neither human or animal, but had the attributes of both." aborigine japakui (pronounced "jap-a-guy") & the rainbow serpent who created the world photo: davis middle school With this deep earth connection, many Aboriginal peoples of interior Queensland and South Australia believe that "opals, like other minerals, have a spiritual value in that they represent a part, like an organ, [that] a Dreaming ancestor left behind as a sign of his or her presence in a particular spot." Given Australia's vastness, customs, language, stories and records vary from place to place and group to group -- and so there are many stories about the rainbow-colored stone in the earth. This one is courtesy of June Barker, a long-time indigenous resident of Lightning Ridge (Queensland): pullah pullah, the butterfly aboriginal dreamtime, interpretation photo: eastbourne primary school She lived with her family among the grasses and reeds around the Coocoran Lake, but she often wondered why the high mountains that they could see a long way away every wintertime were covered in white. Her husband, Bullah Bullah, told her never to go near the mountains as something terrible could happen. He often warned Pullah Pullah not to leave the safety of the grasses and reed that grew around their beautiful clear water lake. But one day Pullah Pullah thought she would find out for herself while her husband was away hunting: she flew towards the high mountains. Everyone looked at her and admired her beautiful wings as she flew higher and higher. She could see the mountains all covered in white. Pullah Pullah was so excited, she said, "I will fly right up there and see this white for myself and then I will return home and tell my husband". As she reached the high mountains, snow beat down on the tired and weak Pullah Pullah. She fell to the ground and the snow covered her. Pullah Pullah did not die, she lay quietly and went to sleep while the snow covered her. She lay under the snow until the spring came. As the snow melted away, Pullah Pullah's beautiful dazzling brilliant colors on the wings also disappeared - they melted away with the snow. All the creatures on earth were amazed to see all the colors of the rainbow melting with the snow, running down the mountains, across the plains and over the ridges to disappear into the ground. That's how opal came to be. *Glimmerdream's Dreamtime* line of boulder opal jewelry honors both the Dreamtime concept and the living source of its boulder opal.**
The government of Australia estimates that only one out of a hundred miners finds a significant parcel in any year. Although luck plays a part in the miner's hunt for opal, it is said that the only way to find it is to "move the dirt." About 95% of found opal is potch . Only 5% is of any value. Of this 5%, about 95% is of mediocre grade, leaving 5% that has real value. It is this small percentage -- 5% of 5% that constitutes "precious opal." All too often, mining yields only a meager amount of lower grade opal -- just enough that the miner can live to dig another hole. In an echo of Stanley and Livingston several years earlier, Wollaston had heard of a man, Joe Bridle, who had found a new kind of opal in the Kyabra Hills that lie north-west of Quilpie (Queensland) -- but who had not been heard from for two years. As recorded by Wollaston, he and his party of two (Herbert Buttfield, who later perished on the trip, and an aborigine boy, Tomtit) who were traveling via camels, reached Joe Bridle's camp on at 9 pm on the night of 9 January, 1888, after a grueling day in which they nearly all perished. They had covered 1100 km. (688 miles) in seven weeks in terrible heat of the worst summer known. He went on to record, "We had risked the whole venture on the hope of finding a man, in that 'ungettable' spot, whom Buttfield had not heard from for two years. It sounded a ridiculous enterprise .... but it succeeded." Bridle, reluctant to sell any of his opal, finally led Wollaston to a Charlie Whitehead who sold him 61 pieces -- 60 of which made it to England.	a herculean task Subsequent to Herbert Bond's early failure to establish an opal presence in London, the honor of convincing the gem merchants of the world to accept boulder opal can be said to rest on the tireless struggle and sheer determination of one Tully Wollaston, a young surveyor turned entrepreneur, from Adelaide, South Australia. typical mining topography; hayricks mine photo: courtesy of house of tibara Arriving in London on the S.S. Sydney, in July 1889, with sixty pieces of brilliant Australian opal rough, he began his Herculean task: getting this brand-new opal variety -- boulder opal -- recognized as a gem by gem merchants and gemologists, especially the conservative English who had come to know and accept only the traditional milky pale Hungarian / Slovakian opal that had been in the "only game in town" for centuries. Like those before him, he had no success until he eventually found a firm -- Hasluck Brothers in Hatton Gardens (London's jewelry / diamond center) -- who purchased the sixty pieces, agreeing to promote the stone. The second task, made somewhat easier by the incredible beauty of boulder opal, was to get gem merchants, gemologists, and the public to appreciate and promote the unique attraction of the stone. Within two years, of his first trip, demand for Australian opal had increased and large parcels of rough opal were eagerly sought. Queen Victoria, described as "an ardent opal lover," also did much to boost the Australian opal industry, giving opal jewelry to her numerous progeny and extended family scattered across Europe, creating demand among Europe's aristocracy. a not uncommon site in opal country However, achieving the level of success that boulder opal enjoys today involved more than a queenly nod -- it took a prodigious amount of what the Australians would call "bloody hard yakka" (Aussie slang for "hard work"), as well as "heartbreak, frustration, determination and at times success at incredible odds" says Australian author and noted opal expert Len Cram, who calls Queensland boulder opal the "most exquisite product." In his book A Journey With Colour, he goes on to say: "Two World Wars and droughts slowed the progress of Boulder Opal realizing its full potential on the world stage. Although mining on a small scale continued it was relatively dormant. It was not until 1967, when Des Burton, a pharmacist from Quilpie, became involved with Boulder Opal, [that the industry was revitalized]. In the 1970's he introduced modern opal cut mining techniques which revolutionized the opal mining industry." And the rest, as they say, mate, is history.