Peter’s Story

Running my shop ‘Mineshaft’ and being a full time opal miner made my life very busy. Somehow amongst all this I had to juggle a marriage and spend time with our young son Michael.

We had bottomed on opal at our new grasshopper claim and were really keen to go down and dig it out.

A Comfortable Routine My life had developed a certain comfortable routine over the time we had been mining at Mintabie. Whilst in Canberra I would run our business and around…

Expect The Unexpected Opal mining is exciting. Every day is a chance and everyday has its adventure. In between all this lies a normal sort of existence. However even day-to-day…

My dad was inflicted with that horrible disease ‘Alcoholism’. That didn’t mean I loved him less. I just didn’t like seeing the man who was such a wonderful father, in a drunken state.

Yeon Kim (A Korean Opal miner) had joined our partnership on an equal basis. This gave flexibility for one of us to go back home and the mining continue.

After the accident I went by bus to Brisbane and visited Chris who was staying with her mother. We went car hunting and I purchased a horrible little two door Holden Torana.

I was almost 30 and my life was about to enter a period of dramatic change on all fronts. Christian was offered a posting with the French embassy in the Maldives.

1983 was our first year of full time professional opal mining. Robert had resigned from his secure job and Peter Bucke had agreed to become the full time manager for Mineshaft.

We returned home to Canberra with my share of the opal from Spooky’s claim. What a feeling to have so much beautiful rough opal to look at and cut.

Robert and I had just started mining ‘Spooky’s claim’ on the Old Field at Mintabie. We were accumulating a nice selection of cuttable stones.

The year of 1981 saw us on our way to Mintabie to try our hands at opal mining. We met up with my new partner Robert and his wife June at the shell garage on the outskirts of Port Augusta