You might have noticed during the Commonwealth Games that the Australian women’s basketball team is called the Opals.
About 80% of Australian opals (the stones, not the basketballers) come from Coober Pedy in outback South Australia. The name Coober Pedy comes from the Arabana Aboriginal words ”kupa piti” and means ”white man in a hole”. Fourteen year old William Hutchison, the youngest member of an Adelaide gold Prospecting Syndicate discovered Coober Pedy while searching for water in 1915. The prospectors were traveling in the worst drought known in South Australia up to that time and members of the party were forced to go in different directions in search of water while young Willie was left to look after the camp.
Disobeying orders, Willie wandered away from camp to search for water around the foothills of a nearby range. He hadn’t returned by dark.
Finally, he strolled into camp with a grin on his face and half a sugar bag of opal on his shoulder. Not only had he found opal, but a fortnight’s supply of good water. Word of the find spread and within a few months, $34,000 (a huge amount at the time) worth of opal had been produced.
Read more about opals and other jewelry.
