White Cliffs Australian Opal Mine - 1Earth Gemstones and Appraisals Magazine

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White Cliffs Opals - Australian Opals

White Cliffs is Australia's oldest commercial opal field. It is all but mined out but it was the largest opal mine in the world before Coober Pedy was discovered.

White Cliffs is near the New South Wales/ South Australian border, 295 kilometres northeast of Broken Hill.

Opal was first mined at White Cliffs about 1889, and the population peaked at 5,000 in its heyday. For 30 years the White Cliff opal fields produced the first commercially accepted opal on the world markets.

Digging for opals was easy despite the water shortages, and the light opal was of very high quality and found a ready market in Europe, far surpassing the quality of the Hungarian opal. The light crystal opal found at White Cliffs quickly became famous on the world markets.

Opal displaying such vivid colours had never been seen before. The colourful opal did not shatter like other opal when cut and polished.

From 1903 to 1914 the richer areas of the opal field became exhausted. White Cliffs suffered and never recovered from the effects of World War I and the increasing production at Lightning Ridge, Coober Pedy and Mintabie.

Today, White Cliffs is a unique town and is popular with opal fossickers. Some townspeople still live underground where it is cool in summer and warm in winter.

A solid light crystal opal from White Cliffs, NSW, Australia

Although there is not much new ground left on the opal field to sink a new shaft, one can fossick among the old diggings. Many people say that more opal remains in the ground waiting to be discovered and White Cliffs will turn into a boom town again!

The Australian opal is the finest quality in the world. 95% of the world's precious opals come from the Australian mines.

Opal are also found in Mexico, Brazil, Japan, western USA and Honduras. By 1932, the Eastern European mines were unable to compete with the high quality stone being found in Australia and they ceased production.