[ON THE OPAL FIELDS OF WHITE CLIFFS]
There are many strange places and peoples in this world, and of those the opal fields and opal miners of White Cliffs, New South Wales, are good examples. The opal district is situated sixty miles N.N.W. of Wilcannia, a somewhat remarkable township on the Darling River, and the men who make gem-hunting their profession number over two thousand. Of this amount, less than a half belong to some branch of the Anglo-Saxon race, the remainder being a mixture of all nationalities, of which Germans are the most numerous. The township of White Cliffs stands in a hollow in the centre of the "workings," but it is merely a collection of galvanised iron drinking saloons and stores; the population living out on their claims, some in tents, some in their horizontal excavations or "drives"; and others with only the sky for a roof. When it is stated that the town also contains a Warden's residence, a hospital, and a good substantial prison—there is as yet no church—that most of the stores are run by Chinamen, and that the Jew gem-buyers form the aristocracy, the description of the town is complete. The fields, however, at present extend for three miles round the town, and in all probability will stretch further out on the great western desert when some means of providing sufficient water for the miners is devised. But the opal has been proved to exist in such vast quantities within the three miles radius, that there is as yet no need for any one to go further out.
The methods employed in searching for opal are extremely simple. Briefly, this consists of sinking a shaft, or, if the claim happens to be located on a slope, tunnelling into the ground until a seam of gem-carrying matrix is encountered; from which the opal is then separated by means of a small "gouging" pick or other tool. These layers exist at various parallel levels from the surface down to forty feet, but no "paying" opal has yet been struck at greater depths. It is highly probable, however, that this is because the task of further sinking with the primitive means of pick, spade, and windlass, the only appliances used, becomes at this point somewhat difficult, and the men, knowing the value of the shallower levels, prefer spending their energies on another shaft in fresh country. The matrix in which the gem is found consists of a hard silicious conglomeration, usually thickly impregnated with ironstone. The opal is embedded in this material in the form of thin sheets, which, however large they may be while in the formation, can only be removed in divisions of about the size of a five shilling piece.
Opal is of all colours and shades, but unfortunately for the miner a piece of exquisitely coloured blue, green, or red stone is considered absolutely valueless if not accompanied with the vivid scintillating flash which denotes its "lifeness." Tons upon tons of this worthless stuff, "Potch," as it is called, are daily thrown out of the shafts by disgusted opallers, for in common with most things in this world, the bad is very plentiful, in fact it is almost impossible to get away from it; but the gem or "live" opal is correspondingly rare. Nevertheless, fortunes are frequently made here by the merest chance, and perhaps to a greater degree than elsewhere is a man justified by results in believing that some day he will "send his pick through a fortune." As said before, the miners are of nearly all the races of mankind, and many incongruous partnerships are formed for the holding and working of a two, three, or four men's claim; but on the whole, good fellowship rules throughout the camps, and an American negro, a half-caste Chinaman, or a Turk, stands by the windlass of a canny Scot, a Frenchman, or a Hindu.
There are no disputes between capital and labour in White Cliffs, every man is his own master, and follows out his own usually erratic inclinations, unless sometimes when, after a lucky find, he imbibes too much of a certain commodity falsely-labelled Scotch, and consequently the police exercise a slight control over his movements.
There are no surface indications to guide one in searching for opal, and as the most experienced "gouger" knows no more where the gem may be than the latest new chum, all work is done on chance. To such a strange state of mind has the desert environment reduced those men of the back-blocks, that they look upon the grim side of circumstances with indifference, and magnify the trivialities of life into a proportion which to the stranger suggests a land of Burlesque. But soon he, too, catches the mysterious infection, unconsciously he is overwhelmed by the influence of his surroundings, and he ceases to see anything remarkable either in his own doings or in those of his fellows. An observer, while he retained his own mental equilibrium, might see instances of this strange perversion in almost every man in White Cliffs; but, perhaps, my own experiences there may serve to give some fair examples.
My claim was staked about a mile from the town on a small stretch of rising ground which at some time in the Earth's history formed the banks of the lake, in the old bed of which White Cliffs now stands. For comrades I had a powerful Scotsman and two Australians, while the claims around us were worked by an American and a native of Mauritius, known as Black George, a German and an Englishman—the latter being termed the "Parson," a New Zealander and a Swede, and several other single miners, the chief being one called Satan. We were all good friends, and nightly gathered round a common camp-fire to discuss things in general.
Silent Ted and Emu Bill, my two Australian comrades, were perhaps the most experienced prospectors on the field; the one had a very thoughtful cast of countenance, and never spoke, and the other was a splendid specimen of the Australian pioneer, but when he spoke it was chiefly in short, crisp words, of decided colonial origin, which Mac said would have qualified him "A1 for the position of a Clyde stevedore." Together they had crossed the divide between the Darling River and Cooper's Creek, and occasionally, when the moon was full, and the Southern Cross dipping behind the Great Barrier Ranges, Bill would tell of a land where fire-flashing opal burst through the surface sands, and shone in dazzling streaks of every imaginable colour from every wind-swept ledge. Ted would eagerly follow his comrade's words, and his wonderful face would light up with genuine admiration when Bill's word-pictures were powerfully descriptive. But he was too sympathetic, and frequently, alas! got into trouble because of that.