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The famous Virgin
Rainbow Black Opal is for sale here!
"The Flame Queen"
The ‘Flame Queen' was mined on Bald Hill in 1914, not far from where Charlie Dunstan mined ‘Queen of the Earth' in 1906.
Three partners, Jack Phillips, Walter Bradley and "Irish" Joe Hegarty took over a partially dug claim that was abandoned by a miner who left to fight in World War I.
The Flame Queen opal
Lightning Ridge was a risky place to speculate for opals. The early miners used picks and shovels, battling fatigue and hunger and desperate to find an opal-rich shaft. Hegarty completed the partially dug tunnel, but when he reached the opal level, the site appeared worthless.
The opal-rich clay, usually around 30 feet down the shaft, did not reveal any color, which indicates the presence of gemstones. Once Hegarty reached the clay, he and Bradley
tunnelled vertically, a dangerous procedure that could result in the collapse of the entire site.
At this level, with little ventilation and light, Bradley discovered a "great nobby". Close to 35 feet below the surface, in a tunnel little more that 2½ feet wide, he was hoisted up so that he could examine the stone under daylight.
The story goes that Walter Bradley took a "bite" at "a great black nobby" with his steel snips and revealed the brilliance of opal within. They were offered £7 in the rough for the stone, which they refused.
Of the three partners, Bradley was the most skilled lapidary and had the best equipment to cut and polish the rough. It revealed a dazzling red domed center with a greenish blue border. The three men, broke and exhausted from their
labor, hungry from scarce food supplies, hastily sold the opal to a gem buyer for 93 pounds.
Phillips, Bradley & Hegarty were the lucky miners, who shared the £93 that Ernie Sherman gave them for this collector's piece. Cutting it would have spoilt the unique pattern. John Landers reported that the architecture "made this stone!"
A black nobby as big as the palm of a hand, ‘Flame' weighed 253 carats. An oval, 2 3/4 inches x 2 1/3 inches, with a dome that a half-crown would not cover, displayed a broad bronze-red flash. The ½-inch dome was framed with a high emerald green 3/8-inch band (then electric blue from another angle).
Thus, the appearance of a ‘Poached Egg', the rather unflattering nickname that was given to ‘Flame'.
One writer described the stone thus: "Suppose you put an egg in a frying pan. Directly the egg hits the pan, the white spreads out, leaving the yolk standing in the centre. This is what the exquisite stone looks like, only the yolk is a striking blood-red, raised above and surrounded by beautiful blue-green opal."
The cut and shape are highly unusual and enhance the natural formation of the stone. Under differing lights and angles, the stone reflects numerous combinations of color in a unique and remarkable way.
A Brisbane jeweller submitted the stone to the NSW Geological Survey. It was established that traces of
ginko, a fossil plant (Chinese maiden hair fern), occurring in Jurassic rocks but not in any opal deposits, were impressed on the back of the gem. The asking price for this unusual opal has continued to climb over the years with each change of hands. In 1925, an offer of £2000 was made. In 1948, she was valued at £5000. In 1973, $US 32,000 was paid. In 1980, ‘Flame' was for sale again at a million dollars!
As of 1992, she was back home in Australia. In 2003, ‘Flame' was put up for auction at Christie's in New York but was passed in for an undisclosed reserve. (Estimated at US$250,000) Current photos confirm the beauty of this gem and no sign of crazing after 86 years of to-ing and fro-ing.
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Famous Opals