Well guess I never did get back to the original thread. Yes my wife and I went in September of 2022. It is a beautiful drive up to the mine. Quite easy with any kind of 4X4.
What isn't so clear is you don't actually mine for opal. All you do is noodle through their tailings and try to find some cast off opal. We found quite a bit of white opal (worthless and common) and one actual opal. Nothing too special but was a great souvenir for my wife. The guy running it Opal Bob said that if we left it with him his son would cut it out of the stone and polish and mail it to us for $50-75. So we did. Bad news is that it took 7 months to get our opal back and let me tell you it was very disappointing. I am pretty sure we didn't get back what we left and what they did was rough cut the opal out, run a dremel tool over it, and wrap some wire around it to make it a pendant.
Overall thought it was a fun day, fairly inexpensive. My suggestion that if you do find gem opal don't let them do anything to it. Take it home and find a jeweler that does it and have it cut at home or keep it raw.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by huntinstuff
Attention Anti Hunters
Sit back
Pour yourself a tea
Watch us "sportsmen" attack each other and destroy ourselves from within.
From road hunters vs "real hunters" to bowhunters vs rifle hunters, long bows and recurves vs compound user to bow vs crossbow to white hunters vs Native hunters etc etc etc
.....
Enjoy the easy ride, anti hunters. Strange to me why we seem to be doing your job for you.
Excuse me while I go puke.
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