“To find opal -- that’s what I come here for. --To find out illusive beautiful gem that they sort of bounce as they look at me.”

 

The town of Coober Pedy is home to about 3,000 people. It was built on opals. Over 90% of the world’s opals come from Australia. And the first ones on this continent were discovered right here in 1911. Finding opal has been turned into as much of a science as the rock will allow. This team has been digging for a year and half since their last significant payoff. They believe they are only a few feet away from a major find.

 

The problem is, in this town, almost every one, almost every day, believes he is on the verge of finding a fortune. Something like this, these opals were all cut out of the same physics-sized piece of rock, and will sell for at least 300,000 dollars, maybe a lot more. But here’s the thing: 95% of all opal is colorless, worthless. This maze of tunnel did not produce even a dollar’s worth of opal. One of the odd benefits of digging so many holes in search of opals is that some of them can be converted into homes. But it is the mother lode payoff that is on everybody’s mind.

 

     “With a mole of what we are setting there, there could be millions of dollars. There is millions of dollars. And there is tons that would knock your, at chance that would be just astronomical. And most significant thing, they never see a lot of dollar.”

 

Out here were holes in the ground passed for buildings--most people do not find their fortunes. At the end of this day that started with so much hope, these miners came up empty again. The odds are as long as they keep questing for opals, this would be the course of their lives for all the hopes, dreams, and hard work, scratching a living out of the ground.