Australia is the source of most of the world's precious opal you're probably
familiar with black opal from lightning Ridge and light opal from coober pedy
but you may not know about the many many other sites that produce amazing
different sometimes are really weird but always beautiful opal I visited the
Australian Opal Centre and Lightning Ridge and spoke to Jenni who will take
us on a tour of some incredible opal specimens chosen for their scientific
and illustrative value
okay so here are some beautiful black opals from Lightning Ridge this one has
just about every color in the spectrum and a lovely foil pinfire rolling
pattern this is a beautiful small stone that has a you know I guess you could
call it a merino pattern rippling rolling flash perhaps mackerel or merino
pattern in Bluegreen this is a sensational thing massive sheets of
unbelievably bright blue green red astonishing brightness and color and
then these are really neat these are little bright pieces with some black
potch in the face now that little black area you can see is called potch it's
called common opal so common opal doesn't have the spectral colors that we
think of when we talk about opal and common opal or Potch is what often gives
opal its underlying body tone so these are black opals not because they are
black on the face but because they've got a dark underlying body tone and if I
turn that little guy over you can see that it's got a mix of gray and black on
the back and on the side directly under what's called the color bar there's
black and that's common opal or potch with a natural layer or precious opal
which is the colored opal on top I'll show you some other Potch so this is a
chunk of seam opal so the opal has formed in a horizontal or vertical seam
in the ground and you can see that this piece has quite dark almost black potch
and then grading through into a sort of mottled lighter grays through to even
areas of almost white at least 95% of the opal that - find is common opal or
potch so that's a piece of seam opal here's another little piece of seam that
also has some precious opal in it so it's got the gray and then it also has
some bluey purple and green coming through and at lightning ridge we have a
unique formation called a nobby nobbies are nodular this is a number of
nobbies they're little lumps it can be anything from the size of a green pea
through to a large potato and this is a lump of clay stone that has a number of
nobbies in it and again you can see their dark grey to black and in this
piece ranging through to a pale gray this is a little chip from a nobby
and if I turn it over you can see that on the inside it had a layer of black
beautiful potch and a layer of precious opal on top so if you're going to cut a
stone from that you would cut it so the top of the stone was here and the bottom
of the stone was here and you'd get the bright color sitting on top of the dark
background and you'd have a beautiful black opal so that's black opal and a
couple of the different formations light opal this is an example of a light opal
so it has what we call a light body tone this one's got a sort of a sheeny
almost chartreuse sort of green yellow a color very pretty now this is actually
from lightning ridge lightning ridge is most famous for its black opal but it
also produces light oh here's another green light opal from lightning ridge
again a sort of a Goldy green so we've covered black and light and now we'll
talk about crystal opal this is lightning ridge crystal and again
lightning ridge is famous for its black but it also produces beautiful crystal
opal it's a stunning piece many colors so that one has a beautiful range
crystal opal is translucent so if you shine a light through it from behind you
can see the light pass through it here's a piece of darker toned blue
purple crystal opal with some amazing inclusions in the middle really pretty
little piece with a rolling flash and orange gold over green and this is a
spectacular piece of Lightning Ridge dark crystal it's almost like Christmas
lights great big broad pinfire flashes in red green purple blue so it's
completely translucent if I hold it up to the light you'll see the light
passing through it but it does have what we call the dark body
tone two other little interesting pieces you could call this a jelly but it's a
it's a piece of potch that Goldy color is coming from the light passing through
up from behind actually so call this honey opal or honey potch and some people
call it jelly because it doesn't have a distinct pattern but it does have a
really tricky pink and sometimes blue bit of precious opal in it and just
by way of contrast another piece of jelly but this is dark jelly so again
the body tone is dark but it's actually quite translucent in this little box are
some spectacular pieces from white cliffs and most of that is crystal local
these are in fact doublets made with White Cliffs crystal and a little snail
but white cliffs produces both light and crystal opal absolutely stunning
material with beautiful beautiful colors brightness and so on so what this is
another classic location for light and Crystal opal these are all sites where
the opal has formed in a sedimentary environment but opal also forms in
Australia in volcanic rocks and I'll just show you a couple of unusual
examples in this jar beautiful little nodules of opal from
volcanic rocks at a location called Tintenbar in New South Wales so they've
been little air pockets in a volcanic rock that have later filled up with opal
this opal tends not to be stable and to dehydrate and crack when it's exposed to
air which is why these beautiful little nuggets of rainbow have been kept in a
little bottle of water there are other locations in Australia where opal is
found in volcanic rock but Tintenbar is probably the most
famous some of the technical material is truly spectacular
so we'd call that crystal or jelly opal and some of the pieces will qualify as
black or dark crystal
this piece will show you first is a spectacular piece of boulder opal from
Winton in Queensland western Queensland and in this piece you have a full face
of spectacular blue and green in a linear pattern and if I turn it over the
back of it is a brown beautiful rich brown material that's called iron stone
it's an iron rich sedimentary rock and in boulder opal the opal forms naturally
in or on iron stone and Queensland boulder opal so it has a very very thin
layer of precious opal right across the face another little piece from
Queensland I really love is this one it's from the Winton area - and it's
a very beautiful picture stone little iron stone rim around the top precious
green and the touch of lavender at the top and then at the bottom this is
actually white potch so the common opal is part of the design of this stone and
that's just formed in nature and then polished by hand beautiful thing
boulder opals also often cut with the iron stone showing in the face and we can
call it Boulder matrix opal this is a lovely example this is from the Yowah
region and we've got rich brown iron stone on the face and beautiful gem blue
green opal showing as well a classic Queensland presentation of opal is
what's called the Yowah nut and here lovely pair of little blue blue purple
yellow and nuts and a Yowah nut has precious opal inside a sort of a nut
shaped little lump of iron stone and in this case we've got some lighter
sandstone in the middle so they're beautiful I think they're just fantastic
very collectible Yowah nuts here's another piece from the Yowah region and
all of that beautiful patterning with different amounts of iron and other
minerals in the iron stone itself is lovely
it's been sawn open that surface hasn't been polished but you can see the
precious opal in filling little spaces within
this and then on the other side it's been polished so that's beautiful
boulder opal in the matrix opal form natural matrix where the host material
is sort of permeated with precious opal also from Queensland is this spectacular
place and this is from the Koroit opal field and again you've got the brown
iron stone it's it's got a high iron content which takes a beautiful polish
and then these gorgeous gorgeous little pieces with nodules of precious opal
throughout so another really beautiful presentation of boulder opal also just
for fun this is a lump of what the Queensland is called fairy stone so this
is another type of matrix it's an iron stone matrix again but instead of the
opal sitting in seams and rivulets like in the boulder matrix the opal is in
tiny little specks right through the body of it and here's a beautiful
beautiful pinkish white opal from Coober Pedy coober pedy of course is absolutely
famous for its beautiful pastel colored bright light opal and that's a gorgeous
piece of Coober Pedy material something quite interesting this is a piece from a
field called Allen's rise which is sort of near coober pedy in South Australia
you can see on the back and on the side that some of the poaching this is quite
dark that's really quite dark patch in there and this is from South Australia
so this is just to show that although the Lightning Ridge is the world capital
of black opal there are dark opals found in a couple of other Australian
locations nothing is dark and rich as the
Lightning Ridge material on the whole but there you go there's a piece of sort
of mid-tone South Australian material
another thing lovely is this material this is from
Mintabie in South Australia and there's just a very thin face of
precious opal on this sedimentary ground I think that's just lovely
clearly not a piece for jewelry but such a beautiful collector's piece it's got
pink and gold and green Mintabie has also produced some lovely black opal
over the years not a lot of production here's another piece from Mintabie and
you can see in this some of the darker pot coming through in a couple of spots
so again just a beautiful specimen piece green and violet and a little bit of
blue one last piece from in to be just because it's gorgeous it's naturally
crazed and I think that is a beautiful violet purple little tiny flecks of blue
and green so Mintabie is another classic opal location in Australia with quite a
low production in these days so we talked about Queensland bolder matrix
which is the material where the opal is distributed through the iron stone
there's also a type of matrix where there's a very fine grained rock and the
opal is in tiny little pores through that rock now this place is called
Andamooka concrete it's a colloquial term and it's been partly treated so
that the opal in the treated area is showing up what happens is it's it's
cooked often in some oil or different kinds of oil sometimes acids involved
but the basic principle is that atoms of carbon get in between the pores within
the rock and as they cook they turn black they carbonize and that helps to
darken the body tone and enhance the opal appearance so that's treated
Andamooka concrete this piece is partially treated and it doesn't have a
high polish on it but you can see the difference between sort of more or less
untreated unpolished material on the back
it's a little corner there where you can see sort of an intermediate stage and
then that on the front this material is treated but it's quite rare and highly
valued and here are a couple of pieces of treated Andamooka matrix so this is a
slightly different material to the concrete but the principle of the
treatment is the same it's been cooked so that there is black carbon that
emulates the appearance of black opal and enhances the precious opal color
that you can see on the face there's one and here's another with some sort of
rich Reds in it this is pot or common opal from Western Australia you may not
recognize it as opal when you first saw it but Gemological testing shows that it
is the little lines in it are called dendrites and that is common opal potch
opal with dendrites from Western Australia from volcanic deposits another
piece from Western Australia totally different really unusual this is a piece
of quartz with opal inside so it's opal in quartz very unusual and that
concludes our epic tour of Australian opal it was in no way exhaustive there
were several sites that didn't get featured and heaps of different types of
opal we didn't get a chance to look at there will however be a second part as
we explore some incredible examples of opal from the rest of the world it's
going to be a lot of fun hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out
this video was made with the support participation patience and enthusiasm of
the Australian opal Center in Lightning region if you visit Lightning Ridge and
you should visit Lightning Ridge you should visit the Australian opal Centre's
showroom in Morilla Street you should also follow the AOC on Facebook to stay
up to date with their epic project to build a world-class Museum of opal in
the incredible outback landscape of Lightning Ridge if you enjoyed this
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