Opal Mines - Mining for Opal - Australian Gemstones & Appraisals Magazine

Stop Press! Stop Press! Stop Press! The famous Virgin Rainbow Black Opal is for sale here! Mining Opals Gem grade opal mining requires a great deal of patience, experience and most of all - a lot of luck. It is a very difficult gem to locate or fingerprint geologically, major mining companies have tried unsuccessfully to mine opals. Australian opal is the finest and most precious opal in the world, suppling 95% of the world market. Most Australian opal is mined in South Australia - Coober Pedy, Andamooka and Mintabie, although there are opal mines in NSW and New South Wales. Opal Mining in Australia The two most common ways of mining opal is "open cut mining" and by tunnelling. An open cut opal mine A prospector uses an auger drill to find opal traces at a certain depth in the ground. A trend is determined when traces of opal are found in several holes. This is called a slide.
An open cut mine is started when a slide is found. A bulldozer is used to take the top layer of ground and the an excavator carefully digs and checks the ground for opal. This method is far more safer than tunnelling but more expensive in running costs and down time.	Photo compliments of Tourism SA
The tunnelling method A bucket drill is used to drill a large diameter hole in the ground and a tunnelling machine is lowered down to search for opal.
Photo compliments of Tourism SA	This method is called underground mining and is usually used on the fields of Coober Pedy where the ground is usually softer. This is a very dangerous method of mining. Hundreds of miners have died from cave inns.