The Story
The Story
Opal has always been the work. The way it reaches people keeps changing.
The field
I'm a second-generation opal miner in Coober Pedy, South Australia. This is where I work, where the claim is, and where every part of the operation has to stand up to real conditions.
Mining teaches you to pay attention to what is actually in front of you. The ground does not care about a good sales pitch. You look, make a call, and keep moving. That practical streak runs through everything else I do.
This story keeps that working context close to the surface. The claim is not a backdrop added after the fact. The stone, the night experience, the store and the screen work all begin in the same place. Each one shows a different part of the operation, but none makes much sense without the ground underneath it.
The stone
Finding opal is one job. Helping somebody understand what they are looking at is another. In 2022 I established Unearthed Australian Opal as an international direct-to-collector store for Coober Pedy opal.
Unearthing Opal Live took that direct approach underground: the first opal auctions anywhere to run live from the mine itself, selling stone as it comes out of the wall. Viewers could follow the work and buy Coober Pedy opal without flattening the whole thing into a polished showroom story.
A finished stone can travel a long way from the claim. The direct-to-collector model keeps its starting point in view. The store carries Coober Pedy opal internationally; the live auctions let an audience see the underground work alongside the stone. They are different formats built around the same material.
The night dig
The Unearthing Opal Experience brings small groups onto my own working claim from March to November. It happens at night, with advance bookings, because this is a real operation rather than a stage set.
Guests get close to the process and the place. The scale underground makes its own point; so does the first line of colour in the wall.
The experience is deliberately small-group and runs through the mining season. Advance booking keeps the visit structured around the working claim. People arrive for an outback night tour and leave with a clearer line between the ground, the work and the opal they have seen underground.
The wider frame
Discovery audiences may know me from season 12 of Outback Opal Hunters, in New Digs. Television gives people a way into this world. The businesses and the tour give them a way to stay connected to it.
That is the useful part of having a few different hats: the mine, the store, the experience and the camera can all tell the same honest story from a different angle.
The story has travelled through more than one channel. It has appeared on episode 377 of The Adelaide Show, in press coverage of Unearthing Opal Live, and in a South Australian Government small-business feature. Each appearance is another route back to the work in Coober Pedy.
One place, several routes
The store, the night experience, the live auctions and television speak to different audiences. A collector can start with a stone. A visitor can start with a night on the claim. A viewer can start with an episode or a live auction. The entry point changes; the place behind it does not.
Unearthed Australian Opal has operated since 2022. The Unearthing Opal Experience runs on my working claim from March to November. Unearthing Opal Live brought the auction underground, and Outback Opal Hunters brought the work to Discovery audiences. Put together, they form a practical record of what I run and where it comes from.
What comes next
The next shift starts where the last one finished: on the claim, with a practical job to do and a better way to bring people into the story when it makes sense.
Coober Pedy rewards people who can make things happen with what is in front of them. That is the standard I keep for the work, the businesses and anything new that comes across the table.
For now, the public record is straightforward: a second-generation miner, a working claim, an international opal store, a night mining experience, live underground auctions and a season of television. The next useful project will have to earn its place alongside them.
