Opal Digging with Tommo - the Campoven Cook

I first became interested in Opals on a fishing trip to Borroola. We had a young fellow with us from Lightening Ridge in NSW. We were staying at the fishing camp just out of Borroola and having a few beers at the bar, when young Paul received a phone call from his father. They had just sold an opal for over $100,000. Wow, that would make anyone interested!

Ten years later a mate of mine asked me would if I would be interested in becoming a partner in a mine out at Lightening Ridge. With a $100,000 opal floating around in my mind, I jumped at the chance.

Five years later, after a lot of hard work and money spent – we still had no colour. We had dug a lot of opal, but for it to be worth something, it must have a colour bar through it.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, because when you start to mine you need a camp or somewhere to put your head down after a hard day’s work, so I will get to that now. We started with 2 caravans and a container. We put a roof from 1 van to the container, which became our kitchen.

As you can imagine it gets very hot in the summer out in the Ridge. One day I checked the temperature in the and it was 48 degrees! So the hardest thing is to keep your tucker and beer cold. After a hard days work in that heat, you can imagine the taste of a cold beer! The first one never touches the side.

I’m getting ahead of myself again – how do you keep your tucker and beer cold in that heat? Well, I can tell you that as soon as the temperature reaches 37 degrees our gas fridges in the caravans packed it in. Luckily I had my WAECO CF-50 (49L) fridge in the car and with a lot of good management and luck we survived that trip! (My partner wanted to throw all the food out and just fill the WAECO with beer – ha-ha! I nearly agreed.)

I was determined to make sure this would never happen again. On my return to the Gold Coast, my first stop was the WAECO Headquarters at West Burleigh. After telling the boys in the service department my dilemma, I left with a WAECO CoolMatic upright fridge/freezer. The good thing about this fridge is it runs on 12 volt DC, 24 volt DC and 240 volt AC/Mains.

Even on the hottest days now I can serve ice cream and we keep some frozen tucker in the freezer just in case the fresh stuff runs out. The main thing is that the beer is ice cold!





Oh! We did eventually did find some Opal with colour. Here is some:







If you want to know more about WAECO fridges, I have used them and know what they can do, especially in the Outback. Just call me on 0419 640 334 and I will tell you.

Got to run now! But next time we get together I will tell you how to go underground.

Best of luck,

Tommo

P.S. If somebody gives you Opal it will give you Luck…
(Look at me!)

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