ROGER: Yeah, copy, Lee.
LEE: (ON RADIO) Gotcha, Rog.
Yeah, mate, gonna have to get that bloody truck up in here.
We, erm, need to dig out some material.
Yeah, man. On my way over now.
So this is one of the things that we've got to do.
Get all the material out. Make sure that we clean up as we go.
Once you finish, we'll, erm, we'll find another spot
because we're not having too much of a good run.
Yeah, copy that. You're all right to go, mate.
Gonna take off now.
I'm just finding somewhere to just dump this.
Hole eight. Go into hole eight.
Nah, it's all lumpy here, man. The truck won't get over anything.
Yeah, copy that. I'm just gonna dump it here.
That's gonna be right there. About to find out.
Tailgate.
Oh. (EXHALES) All good.
Ah, you are kidding me!
There's too much weight at the back end.
Oh! (BLEEP)
Nah. You're kidding me.
(ENGINE STRAINING)
Try putting the bin down.
Nope. The bin won't even come down.
It's actually stuck in the pile of silt.
I put it up too hard against it.
Yeah, these wheels are spinning, but I ain't going anywhere.
If you can give us a hand to push this bin down, we'll be fine, maybe.
The wheels are spinning because there's too much weight at the back end. No traction.
Normally, you creep forward as you're dumping your dirt.
I didn't do that. Took my eyes off the prize for a little bit.
All right, Lee, we might be able to get it out
if we put a little bit of pressure back on these other tyres.
Try to drop that bin down, man. I'll try to give a little bit of a push.
Righto. Going down now.
Yeah, I can't get no movement out of that at all.
Argh. Righto.
I've got another idea, man. Here we go.
Oh, yeah, I got it, I got it.
Try and lasso that little bit of rope up there
so we can try and pull that bin down.
Ha, how much we got on this? Okay, 50 bucks.
Ha! Fifty bucks!
No, no, no.(LAUGHS)
No, no, no, no. We didn't shake on it, bud.
Right, grab a hold of it, pull it down.
Here she goes. Oh, that's the money, mate.
All righty. Jump back in and see how we go.
Ready!
There she goes. (CLAPPING) Yee-ha!
In Lightning Ridge, New South Wales,
Slim Pickings' Lee Hobden and Roger Williams...
We aren't really picking up too much opal over this side, are we?
We'll have to rattle our brains a little bit and figure out where we need to go next.
...are looking for fragments of opal left behind in the waste silt
from over a century of mining at their Government Tank claim.
You see all these lines here? These are all from different fields,
and this stuff was washed up to over 80 years ago.
The 200x200-metre claim is on the site of an historic water dam,
one of the few places old-timers
could wash their pay dirt to reveal any opal.
So they'd bring it here, tip the truck up, and it'd chute in.
These old puddlers here, they were around for about 50 or 60 years.
So as they put the dirt in, the water in, spinning it around,
throw all that mud out through this mesh here,
carrying all those chips and small stones into the silt bay.
So, how we do it is we'll come as close as we can
up to the puddler, that silt rump. And that's what we're after.
Then you'll have your black soil or whatever it's sitting on.
Not worth taking. It's not even silt at all.
Right now, we're not making exactly what we really need to keep ourselves running.
My kids, my family, we all depend on it.
This is... This is our only income.
You know, we've definitely got to keep that money flowing.
These machines, they don't fill themselves up.
How are you, mate?
(MAN SPEAKING ON PHONE)
Don't have anything at the moment. If you're coming,
we might have a parcel for you.
All right, mate.
Well, I just got off the phone with a buyer. He's keen as mustard.
Well, mate, if he's a buyer, he's a buyer.
Pretty much the only thing is that we don't have anything for him.
Let's go have a scratch, let's try up the road, if we find silt up there.
Let's do it, then. Righto, bro. Come on, Bosco.
(ROGER SPEAKING)
Swing him over this direction here. I reckon this is a good spot.
We'll probably take a bit of dirt out here.
Hold on!
That's black soil, mate.
Don't have to come any further up this way.
Shut it down.
You don't find any silt in the black soil.
It's not even silt at all.
I don't know. It doesn't look good at all.
Really, we're after the silt.
We come up to the black soil here, and - Doesn't look like this is gonna pay.
(MACHINE DRILLING)
Not really any colour coming out that I can see anyway.
Give that one a go.
Is there any in that?Nah.Nothing?
Yeah, Kell, I reckon we got all the opal out of this pocket, mate.
You reckon? Yeah, it's not carried on.
We need to get the excavator and get down to that bottom level.
Yep.That's money, you know what I mean? It's heating up too. Like -
Yeah, it is hot.The weather changed like that, didn't it?
But can I just show you something around there?
Yeah. What have you got to show me?
I think it might be colour, but I just want you
to have a look at it. Just in case.
Yep. I'll meet you over there.Okay.
In Yowah, Queensland, the Opal Whisperers,
Isaac Andreou and rookie miner Kelly Taylor,
are attempting to open cut mine
dangerous old-timers' underground workings
on the hunt for Yowah nuts,
rare ironstone boulders with an opal centre.
What've you got, Kelly? Correct me if I'm wrong,
but let me see if I can point to it.
Can you see? Yeah, that's glistening.
There's colour right there in the wall.
That's shining under the sun. It's beautiful.
Ooh!Yeah, it's a very nice colour. That's pretty.
That's what we need, but we can only get that with an excavator.
Whole thing could fall on you if you start getting at it
with a jackhammer and all. The vibration, that'll bury you.
Yeah. Okay, well, we really need Kim to be here.Yeah.
Okay. Well, I'll go make a phone call
and see what is going on with him.
All right. Kim is part of the team now.
He's on the excavator to get us down to that bottom level.
KIM: This little knot's part of mining.
You'll spend quite a few hours in between levels.
If I can just break off the hard stuff, we'll be right.
Without an excavator, heavy machinery, we're just pushing uphill.
Imagine the old blokes who did it all by hand. They didn't get very far, did they?
So we've got the technology, we've got the machine, we just need the driver.
But he's sort of, er, not here today.
So, we don't know why. Hopefully, Kelly will find out.
I'm gonna go up to the bluff
where I can get some reception to give him a call.
You know, its limited ability that I do have with the excavator.
Oh, that's... That is bloody rough.
I just don't really have the confidence.
It's so much better if we have Kim here to help us out.
He is so much faster.
And, you know, the season's only gonna get hotter.
We've got to get it done quickly.
Kelly onboard means big machines. Her partner hires out big machinery.
Not had much of an opportunity to operate one of these.
I drive the loader every now and again.
This is a whole different kettle of fish.
No-one around, so...
...can't make too much of a fool of myself.
I'm gonna have a bloody go.
Kim not showing up really has slowed us down quite a lot.
We're away from family. I've got a little girl, my little Zali.
She's everything to me. She's why I'm doing this job.
(BEEP)Passcode. Guest.
We need to find opal, or I'll be letting everybody down.
My family have been in opals. I'm second-generation.
So, you know, I've got to live up to the legacy.
Oh! (BLEEP)
I just want to go forward, but it seems to go left and right.
Hopefully, I can work it out. I'll just have a little practice run here.
Ooh, wrong way. That's the wrong way.
What is going on here?
(BLEEP)Hey! What are you doing?
Just having a crack.Dude.
Yeah.You break this, man...
I'm not gonna break it. I wanted to get it over there and put it in the right spot.
Righto. All right.Man, it's, like, 200 grand for another one of these.
Fair enough.Just in case.
Yeah, well, we've got to do something. I'm sitting around.
What's going on with Kim? Did you get on to him?Yes.
Not good news.
He's got something on with his family.
He needs to be there, so...
All right. Do you wanna have a go? You can get it.
We've got colour sitting there in the wall.
And I believe there's more just below it.
I'm happy to, like, maybe ramp down a bit,
but I don't want to damage it, dude.
I believe in you. You've got so many hours of experience to be able to do that.
All right.And I'll spot. And hopefully, you'll be all right.
Kelly is concerned about breaking the opal,
but I'd rather have some broken opal than no opal at all.
Right. Find me a million bucks, mate.
Been here for the whole day and nothing's happening.
I'm a little bit out of my depth here.
It's pretty hard to not be thinking about the tunnels
that are literally underneath me, but, you know, no risk, no reward.
So, Kelly's putting the machine into position now.
It's on an angle there, so it's across the drive that's underneath it.
It's a big, deep pit right in front of us here.
The last thing you want is a 32-tonne machine
that falls in a hole.
May as well bury the thing and leave it there.
This is the last of the fluffy stuff on top here now.
We're getting rid of the overburden.
That's the old workings from under the ground they've put on top.
We're a couple of digs, couple of buckets away
from that bit of colour you can see in the wall.
Yeah, I'm really hoping that we can find something in this
because we've got a massive target, and the days are long and hot.
And unless we find something, it's really not worth us being out here.
That arm's pretty extended, Kell.
Roger.
Yeah, look, hold on, mate. Hold on, mate! Whoa, whoa.
Ooh! (BLEEP)
2 (HAMMERING)
I think they're moving. ROD: (ON RADIO) Any success at all down there?
We're getting sunburned sitting up here.
It's just very, very slow.
So, you haven't got the pin out yet?
Not at the moment.
LES: It's coming, but, yeah. Les said, "It's coming, but, yeah."
Hey, Rod. ROD: (ON RADIO) Yeah, mate.
Just in the back of the ute, there's a...
A sauce bottle there. Put some diesel in it, please.
Might decide to make it slip a bit better.Yeah, I got it.
Not making any money. Haven't made any money since we've been in here.
And that's what we're here for, to try and make a bit of money.
So, hopefully, the next place we go,
we have a little bit more better luck.
Deep beneath the sun-blasted Grawin Opal Fields, the Bushmen...
I just dropped that sauce bottle down.
...Rod Manning... It's got diesel in it.
...Les Walsh, and Sam Mehan are relocating their entire operation.
Pretty excited about the new claim, but all the money's going out.
I've got Jacque sitting up here twiddling his bloody thumbs.
He's on an hourly rate.
Whilst ever this pin stays stuck, it's just costing us money.
If that doesn't come off the digger, you just can't lift the body out.
Yay! Woo-hoo!
Woo-woo-woo!
We've finally got it done!
Did you get it?Sure did.
Okay. Take it up. All the way. JACQUE: Righty-oh.
It's a huge relief.
Every minute we spend down here
doing things like that, it's costing us money.
So, to get that pin out is fantastic.
Our target this year is 150 grand.
And we haven't even hit 50 grand yet
and we're halfway through the season. So...
yeah, I'm getting a little bit worried.
That was a challenge, Les.It was.
I don't need that (BLEEP). Nah.(LAUGHS)
Things have been really hard recently.
I love opal. I love mining. But I have to pay for fuel.
I have to eat. My dog has to eat, so I'll have to pick up more shifts
at work where I'm an opal mine tour guide, meaning I'll have less time to dig.
Good-bye and good riddance to Robbie's.
Go somewhere else and shift dirt for a while.
She's been a real rough season, this one.
Costs a fair bit of money to move.
You got to pay the crane operator, you got to get new holes put down
and you've got to bell 'em out, so...
I got Bogger over there trying to race to get that belled out
so we can get this underground, put it together, and away we go.
Righto. Let's get out of this joint.
There's awful lot of pressure on me
because I'm the one that talked everybody into coming here.
Nobody really knows nothing about it.
It's not been mined for at least 40 years, but...
...me and Sam were lucky enough to find a bit of colour underground. Oh!Oh!
Was a lot of little, tiny clues that I got from the place,
so, you know, this might be the one that sets us up.
Let's get things moving here, hey?
G'day, mate. BOGGER: How are you, mate?
Good. Got the, er, digger here.
We'll lower the digger down. Start the, er, start work.
Erm, about that, I haven't broken through yet.
What do you mean you haven't broken through?
I don't know what the story is. I've either gone past it or I've...
You've been following your pointer? Yeah.
I'll go and get a compass.Righto.
Before mining can start at Froggie's,
Bogger must connect two mine shafts
by digging a horizontal drive underground.
One shaft is used to extract the waste dirt,
while the other is kept for emergency evacuation.
He's taken out over three truckloads.
So, I don't understand how he could not have broken through that hole.
It's only five metres.
You got to go down, right.Yeah.
Stand with the blower pipe behind ya.
Your bearing is 140 south.Righto.
Changes things a little bit.
Can't lower the digger yet because they haven't dug through yet.
Righto. I'll try and work out where we're headed here.
So, whereabouts are you?
Erm, yeah, I'm a little bit off, mate. (CHUCKLES)
What do you mean you're a little bit off?
Well, the way I was going, that seems to be off to me left.
How far off to your left?
Oh, I don't know, it's probably a couple of metres.
I don't know. Honestly, I reckon this is gonna take a couple of days to get there.
Oh, Jesus bloody Christ.
Righto, mate, I'm gonna start getting into it.
(BLEEP) this.
Now that's gonna put us majorly behind schedule
with getting everything down here, so that's not good at all.
We're after the silt, but I'm not seeing enough for us
to sort of wanna put it in right now.
Yeah. We just hit the black soil, so...
What are we gonna do, man? Because it doesn't look like this is gonna pay us.
Well, I've got an idea.
Maybe all the puddlers were situated back up closer to the dam...
...25, 30ft away from where they are now.
That means underneath the puddler is old-timers' silt.
Struggling to find opal-bearing silt,
Lee Hobden believes the silt run-off
that's normally found tens of metres from the puddler wash plants
is now directly beneath the puddlers after they were moved by old-timers.
Definitely, man. Like, we've made a few dollars behind it.Yeah.
What do you reckon we'll go over there, hey?
Let's take it. See what's in it.
So, Roger's just getting himself in position there now.
Our best chance to find opal right now is underneath that old puddler.
Hopefully, there is some opal under it.
Well, let's get the money, baby. Let's do it, then!
Mate, I'm gonna start swinging this digger.
So, the old-timer had to have been on opal.
He's taken all the good stuff. We're licking the dinner plate.
So if the dinner plate's had a healthy meal on it,
we'll still get something out of it.
There needs to be opal underneath this puddler.
I've invested a lot of money into the operation.
We've got a buyer coming in. We haven't got anything yet.
So, Roger, from here down, that's all pay dirt.
That's all the old-timers' hard silt runs.
If there's money in that, I'm pretty excited for the next bit, that's for sure.
Having no opal, the pressure is on us.
Hang on.
There's colour here. Look at that. It's even got red in it.
Ooh.Look out. That's a decent piece, isn't it?
It looks like it's almost a cut stone. It's a bit of seam, isn't it, a bit of crystal?
Yeah.Nice. Colour's colour, man.
Well, I'll go and get the truck.
Definitely.We might as well take this whole lot out.
(BOTH SPEAKING ON RADIO) All yours, Lee.Okay.
Look out, Bosco! Go on!
Lee and Roger process the pay dirt
in their makeshift plant called George.
A trommel removes large rocks and sand.
And a repurposed cement mixer washes and agitates
the remaining dirt to reveal opal.
Get in the agitator, hopefully, we'll have a parcel
for the buyer at the end of the week.
It's about fine tuning this machine to make it going all nice and neat.
(LOUD CLANG)
(BLEEP)
Everything good at your end, Lee?
This conveyor is still playing up again, mate.
I think we're eventually gonna have to
swap that out down the track, you know.Righto.
That clip right there.
Because it's coming apart,
every time it goes over the rolling part
on each end of the conveyor, it wants to jam up a little bit.
Come on! Come on! What a (BLEEP).
I don't wanna keep on doing this all day long.
(LOUD CLANG)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Kell!
Oh, (BLEEP)! (BLEEP)
Hold on, mate. Hold on, mate. Yeah, just...
We've got a 15, 20ft pit right in front of us.
Yeah, mate. I don't wanna lose you or the machine.
It is rather nerve-wracking being in this particular spot.
It's pretty hard to not be thinking
about the tunnels that are literally underneath me.
On a 22-tonne excavator...
...rookie operator Kelly Taylor is struggling
to reach a pocket of opal buried deep in their trench wall.
Hey, Kelly! Careful of, just behind you,
there's that shaft, all right?
Yeah, you're right on it. Yeah, that's it. Come forward a bit. That's perfect.
Kim not showing up has really slowed us down.
That guy's a machine. He's been doing it for decades.
Thank God we've got Kell, anyway, who's doing her very best.
I think we might be pretty close here to the level, dude.
(ISAAC SPEAKING)
Fingers crossed it's a winning bucket.
I am going absolute snail pace with this.
All right, Kelly, you've cleared all that overburden now.
So we're on the nut band.
So if we could put that separate to the overburden, we can go through that.Copy.
We're not on the best spot yet,
but all through Yowah, you get these beautiful Yowah nuts.
One in 1,000 of these will have colour in it.
One in 10,000 has a crystal centre,
but they really are few and far between.
Unique to the small Queensland town it's named after,
the Yowah nut is an ironstone rock with an opal centre.
2 Around 135 million years ago,
silica-rich water from an ancient inland sea
drained deep into the Earth.
Over time, the water hardened inside crevices
in the ironstone rocks to form opal.
You can't precision-open every single nut.
We're smashing through them. Once we find a patch that has good colour in it,
we'll take that home and saw 'em open nicely.
Every day, it costs us money to be here, you know.
Like, it's really not cheap.
So, you know, diesel, wages, food,
we need to be finding opal literally every day for this to be worth it.
Whoa, whoa. Yeah. Swear I saw blue.
The sun might be playing tricks on my eyes, but I swear I saw some blue in this one.
Hey-hey! Check that out!
Look at that.
Oh, there better be something there, man.
I don't know if that's the piece we can see in the wall, but -Yay!
I just broke that open and it's perfect. Oh, isn't that stunning?
Look, there's got to be some more in there. Sorry, mate.
It's all good.
Nah, nothing in that one.
Wow. There's -Ooh!
(LAUGHS) Look at that, green electric! Oh.
That goes all the way through!
This bucket needs to be sifted through really carefully.
All right.If there's any nuts in here, let's not whack 'em.
We'll take 'em back and saw 'em, because that's top, top-quality.
Finally, dude.Ah.
Now the fun starts, hey?
(DRILLING)
(SAM SPEAKING)
Hello.Sammy, what are you doing down here?
(SAM SPEAKING)
Yeah, right.(SAM SPEAKING)
Yeah, righto. We'll get into it. (SAM SPEAKING)
In Grawin, the Bushmen are battling to connect two mine shafts
at their new Froggie's claim, stalling their efforts to find opal.
Can't lower the digger yet because they haven't broken through
into the escape hole,
so if something goes wrong, you've got somewhere you can get up.
I feel like a bit of a letdown.
We were supposed to have this done today and have everything down here,
so hopefully, I can redeem me self.
To speed up the process,
team leader Rod Manning has enlisted the help of friend
and part-time miner James "JC" Caruana.
JAMES: Hey!How you going, mate?
JC's a good mate of mine. We've travelled all around Australia
digging opal, and he's been away for a while.
He's been over on the coast and he's missing the Outback and being underground.
So, I told him to get himself out here, and he's gonna dig in
toward Bogger and Sam. And he'll get 'em on the right track.
I am raring right now!
There's always a sense of achievement as well when you go down a new shaft
and you're linking up with another one.
So, as soon as I got the call off Rod, straight out here.
Rodney, you need to sharpen your pick bits.
This is blunt as anything, mate.
(ROD SPEAKING)
There's not enough room for both of us to dig at the same time.
So, Jake's digging and I'm just spotting
in case we find some colour.
Hey! What's going on here?
JAMES: Hello, beautiful! Hey, Jimmy.
How you going, mate?Good, mate. Better now seeing you there.
(LAUGHS) Keep opening it up. Righto, will do.
Finally got into the other hole! Yes!
(ON RADIO) Righto, mate.
This is particularly dangerous.
If the digger does happen to fall,
you know, it's gonna go rocketing down that hole,
and they got nowhere to go in a hurry.
You know, it's a very confined space down there.
That's it, Jacque. Come to me a little bit.
JAMES: There's a little bit of finesse involved with this part of the process.
You've got three pieces to this digger.
And you've only got a small hole to put it down.
LES: Up you go. JAKE: Righto. Send him up.
All the way, mate.
It's only a three-foot hole, so you've just got to be
very safety-conscious.
Shouldn't take long to get this all sorted now.
We're on the last legs of the journey, so...
...see how this arm goes when it comes down,
and it's pretty well it, then. Ooh, ooh. Hold it.
Just take her up a bit, Jacque!
Right. Go again.
JAMES: Watch yourselves down there, fellas!
He's just about there.Yeah.
Oh, whoa. Whoa!
JAKE: Got a fair bit of debris forward down here.
ROD: You're not wrong.
LES: Hold it. Hold it. Hold it! They've lost it.
Ooh! Jesus Christ!
ROGER: I need that to go down on there.
Oh, had it.You've got to put pressure down
and pull over...Yeah. ...at the exact time.
Desperate to find opal for a buyer arriving in 24 hours,
Lee and Roger's push to process
a new stockpile of pay dirt has ground to a halt.
Oh, man, have to go again.
Should have let me up there.Ooh!
We're just trying to do a bit of a quick fix on the belt.
The stitching has come out, and what that's doing is
making the whole, whole belt jutter.
So, if we can try and bring that in a little bit...
...and get it running nice and straight,
they won't be getting caught on these rollers down the ends.
Nah. It's tearing it apart. Torn that screw out.
It's still bringing it over closer.
It's not by much, but... Oh, well, get rid of it.
Yeah, get rid of it. She won't roll with those screws in there.
So, then pretty much all we can do right now at the moment
is to persevere and keep on moving,
and hopefully, we can get this parcel up for the end of the week.
We're just gonna baby it as much as we can.
If we can just get away with it,
it means we're still getting opal in the agi, just.
She's all in, by the looks of her, eh?
I'm hoping there's some opal in there. Now I've set it for two hours.
Let her run.Yep.
We are under pressure to get this parcel up.
Don't have diddly-squat at the moment.
What's in that agi, that's gonna be the parcel. So, fingers crossed.
Coming down to do-or-die time. If this one proves a bit of colour in it...
Righty-oh.Make it rain.
Here we go. It better produce, this tray.
A pinch of trace.
That's all it is at the moment. It's just trace.
Ah, a few minor colours.
No real good suspects here, though.
At the end of day, you know, Roger needs the money for his family.
I need the money to sustain the operation.
And if we don't have any opal here today, well, it is a sticky situation.
Ooh, do you see the flash in that, Lee? Damn!
Wow! I can see that with my glasses off.
That is going to be an awesome little piece, man.
That's nice.(LAUGHING)
There's some money in this, bro, some money in this.
Mate, we're getting... And look at that!Ooh!
Look at the size of that. Yeah, that's a nice blue stone in it, isn't it?
That is some beautiful stuff, man.
And it's quite clean, so that'll cut clean.
So, eh, that's... Mate, that's just adding to the jar.
Dude, couple of grand right there.
Righto, man. Let's keep going. Let's keep on going.
A little bit of a crystal there. Every piece adds up, Rog.
That is some beautiful colour.
It's gonna be happy days, that's for sure.
So, what we've got here is, like, you know, 17 bits of rough opal.
What we're gonna do is value-add.Yeah.
From 2,000, this could end up tens of thousands.
Yeah. Isaac's gonna teach me how to polish and shape a stone.
Ah, I'm hoping that we'll be able to make some really nice pieces,
and hopefully, I don't break anything.
Just get your palms down so they're stable. Use it as a grounding.
And let the diamond do the cutting.
To maximise the value of this week's haul of Yowah nuts...
Roll it forward a little bit. That's it.
Watch the belt on the other side there, you're good.
...rookie Kelly is getting a crash course
on opal cutting by mine partner, Isaac.
Like, roll it a little bit. That's it. It's done.
Let's have a look.
Hey!So, nothing. (LAUGHS) Nothing in it, but hey,
that's an absolute textbook cut, mate.
Look, it's exciting when you're mining opal,
and you're finding and seeing colour.
The real magic happens right here in the cutting room.
This is what I'm good at. This is what I love doing.
Sometimes the end will break because there's a bit of vibration,
if there's any natural fractures in the stone.
In other words, you go slowly.
Look at that, Kell. Wow! Oh, my God!Got a win.
I'll do this one. You do that one. Argh! Okay.
The sawing's the first part. This is our second part. This is grinding.
On your one, you've got the best face showing.It's already showing.
Other side needs to be smoothed out and the shape needs to be refined.
You want to anchor your hands into a good spot,
and just nice, smooth movements.
The edge of these grinding wheels are diamonds.
So if you get your finger on it or the stone, gauge out a big piece, it can cost you money.
Hey, what will I do with this bit here? Like...
Yeah. So, turn your stone, face up, and just grind it flat like this.
Oh, like this?Yeah, like that.
So cool when you see the colour come through.
This makes it all worth it at the end of the day, doesn't it?
Yeah, when you see that colour. Oh, definitely!
How old were you when you cut your first stone?
I was eight. Actually, when I saw Zali, my daughter recently, she just turned eight.
So she cut her first stone as well.
I put it up on the wall. Yeah.
That's so cool. I bet she nailed it. She did.Yeah.She did.
The pressure's on to make our target 300,000.
And I'm feeling the pinch.
All right, let's have a look at it. Getting hot. There's flies.
And at this time, I start thinking about home on the coast near my daughter.
Hey, not bad, mate. Not bad at all.
She misses her dad, so I've got to get home.
Time flies. You turn around, and she'll be a teenager.
I don't want to miss all those years.
2 JAKE: They've lost it. (BLEEP) thing.
We said to hold it.
(ROD SPEAKING)
Apparently, this radio didn't come through, so...
Nearly got us, but it didn't.
LES: This is the last piece to go on.You got him, mate.
Done enough for today.
We're out of light for today. It'll be dark by the time we get this sorted,
so there won't be any digging done.
Tomorrow, we'll come across some colour if we're lucky.
Hopefully, a bloody good pocket. We're due for one.
ROD: Righto, look out, you're in the business end.Yeah, mate.
The Bushmen have finally lowered all their equipment
into their new underground mine, Froggie's.
Yeah. This was a huge gamble, coming into this mine.
So, yeah, we're desperate for a pretty big win here.
Clear a little bit of that out so we can get in there and have a proper look.
Bloody bit of a mission to get down here, get it sorted.
But we finally managed to do that.
So down here, my job, basically, it's just to move whatever dirt that
the digger can't reach and put it into the blower pipe.
Sucking it all up makes things a lot easier.
Try and get in there close and spot for me.
See this, Sam? See the fault?
Yeah, And also the roof too. Back from there...Yeah.
...all the way over to there.
Yeah, I'll give it a bit of a loosen up just to see what's behind it.
Anything there, Sam?
There's, like, kind of a light crystally purple.
It's not great, but it could be worth getting the the jackhammer.
All right.
Oi! Here we go.Oh-oh-oh!
She's getting bigger!
JAKE: Oh, look at that, Jimmy. JAMES: Hey. Whoa!
ROD: Hey-hey!SAM: Yeah.Look at that.What have you got, mate?
On black!JAKE: Far out!
Yeah, I think you guys have picked some bloody good ground here.
Oh-ho!Hey!
Oh-ho-ho-ho! Sam!
Look at the size of this.SAM: Ah!
She'll keep going, don't you worry. God, we've only dug,
what's that, a foot and a half into the first drive?
JAKE: That's it. Get us some more out.
When you're actually cutting opal and that, we may potentially have,
you know, an $8,000 parcel, $10,000 parcel.
It all depends on how they cut.
At his off-grid camp,
Roger Williams is cutting some of this week's opal haul
before a crucial meeting with a buyer.
What I'm doing right now at the moment is I'm just taking away the sand.
If I take too much off it, it could turn into nothing.
You know, like, that is the gamble that you do take.
So hopefully, the buyer loves it.
They're not chips at all. Look how big that piece is.
It's all got colour in it, that's the main thing.
Every single piece has colour in it. That's full.
I was also very busy at cutting. Yep, we'll move this out of the way.
This is what we came up with. Seventy stones in there.
Wow.Beautiful jewellery stones.
Plus, we got all the other little cut cuts that we've got going on.
That's the parcel right there.
Roger and Lee have a mixed parcel of seam and crystal opal
featuring the full spectrum of colours.
There are over a kilo and a half of stones in the rough
and 17 grams of high-quality cut gems.
There he is.Yeah. See what we come to.
Let's get the business, mate.Yeah.
Nathan!Hey, how you going, fellas?
Good to see you.Yeah, yous, too. Thanks for coming.
How are ya?Good, mate. Good. Nathan's a good friend of ours.
I've known him for a long time. He's an opal miner.
And, yeah, he's got his hands in a little buying at the moment.
So, as discussed over the phone, we've got a bit of a parcel for you.
There's some beautiful pieces in there.All right.
So, these are pretty much our precious little cut cuts.
Some beautiful little pieces in there, mate.
Couple of green oranges. Red on blacks.
Nice, bright, clean little stones.
Perfect jewellery stones, as you know, rings, pendants.
Yep.We pull out the best
and we've got the leftovers right here as well.
They are the ones that Roger didn't cut.
They are the leftover little pieces.
Not all of them probably will cut, but a lot of them will.
Plus chip jar.(LAUGHS) Yeah.
So, everybody loves a chip jar.
So that's, erm, all included.
What sort of money are you looking at for 'em?
Well, for the stones alone,
we're looking around that eight-grand mark.
And in those two jars there,
look, we'd probably want at least two grand for them.
So, that's about ten grand, mate.
They're definitely worth it. Every single place in there has got colour.
Yeah, I'd probably be...
...in it at about seven grand.
Ooh, geezus.Mm.
Yeah, well, I'm just looking at what I can see.
We'll come down a thousand bucks, mate.
Probably still a little bit too high for what I'd pay.
Could come up a little bit to probably eight and half,
but that would be me best.
And that's your final? That'd be me final, yeah.
Eight and a half.
No worries.Too easy. Sounds good.Done deal.
Happy days, bro.Thanks, Lee.
Start of the week, we had nothing. End of the week, we sold a parcel.
So, we're pretty happy about that.
What a day! Mate, a week! What a week.Yeah. Man.
Good sale. Nathan's happy.
We've done well. We produced the goods.Yeah.
Cheers, mate.Mate, that's what the beers are for. What a week.
ISAAC: Check out the final results.
This is that one that you, er...
...pulled out of the wall early on - Oh, my gosh, is it, really?
Yeah. I took all the clay off the back. It's pure...Oh, yeah.
...skin-to-skin colour. Oh, that looks so good.
I'm actually so stoked at how that turned out, too.
You did a good job, mate. Thanks, man.
You've done a really good job. I really enjoyed that.
So pretty.I'm impressed. You come here, doing great on the excavator.
Your work with the stones is just perfect.Thanks, dude.
So it's good to have you out here. That's a table full of magic.
The Opal Whisperers have a mixed parcel of Yowah nuts
and crystal opal featuring the full spectrum of colours.
They've been cut and polished
and weigh a total of 250 grams.
So, how much do you think
we've made? (LAUGHS) Value-wise, ooh, okay.
The rubs are, erm...
...15. And then the cut stones.
There's, er, 30. And then 39.
$41,500.$41,500.
$41,500 isn't bad.Excellent.
Hey, I mean, there was a point there
where I thought we weren't gonna find anything.
Yeah, so we're almost halfway.
Ooh-ah.Yeah.
We've got a little way to go, but Kelly's really proven to be an asset out here,
and there's a lot more to dig up.
And it's all way further underground.
So, the second half of this season's gonna be a deep dig,
and it's gonna get bloody hot.
Few firsts this week.
Dug some ground that I have never approached before.
So that was really cool. And the whole cutting
and shaping process, I found really enjoyable.
I wouldn't mind wearing that in a pendant myself. Yeah, or even as a ring.
Oh. Mate, let's call it a day.
Let's do it. Foot five. Yes! (LAUGHS)
Nailed it.Ha!
ROD: Well, I'm pretty happy with what we've got here, Les.
Oh, yeah, that's good. See, that bag there,
that's full of some bloody nice colour.
Some nice stones in that one. And I think this is gonna be the mine for us, actually.
Mm. We've found more here than Robbie's the entire time.
Well, that's it.I didn't realise how tough you were doing it.
We were doing it tough. We had nothing to eat but a bloody old kangaroo leg bone.Yeah.
We even had to fight the dog for the kangaroo leg.
(ALL LAUGH)
The Bushmen have a parcel of dark-based crystal seam opal
featuring blue and green with flashes of rare red.
It's in the rough and weighs one kilogram.
What do you fellas reckon? JAMES: You've got colour.
Can't go wrong with that. That's exactly what you need.
LES: So what are we gonna ask?
Might be a little bit ambitious, but I think, er...
...I think we'll get 20 grand for it.
And then that'll give you some diesel money
to get back down and find another 20 grand.
SAM: Ooh, yeah.JAKE: That's it, mate.Keep on digging.
Well, she was a bit rough along the way,
but she all worked out pretty good in the end.
So, 20 grand, which will pay for the move and all the rest of it.
So, we're pretty bloody happy about that.
I reckon that we ought to have a beer,
but us two old fellas versus you young'uns, the last one to catch
a chook has to shout for the rest of us. All right?
Righty-oh.You're on, mate. We're ready.
All right. So, the rules are... there are no rules.
Hey!(LAUGHTER)
Come on, Les!LES: I'm here.
JAKE: He's gone over the roof!
Hold the door!
We got a chook!(LAUGHTER)
Ours went over the house, mate! Don't wanna hear excuses.
SAM: Mate! That was the easy way to get one.
No use getting old unless you get cunning.
(LAUGHTER)Yeah, righto.
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