September saw an exciting surprise find of opalised sea shells. The pocket of shells appeared unexpectedly, very high in our digging face. Digging the 120 million year old fossils was a lot of fun as some of the shells were full of opal and not just skin shells. The anticipation was high to find out if the shells definitely were full of opal. We waited for the tumbler to wash the shells clean, however unfortunately upon sorting out the shells we discovered the majority of the shells did not contain any colour and the few that did were not clean. Still a great find of specimens! One shell had a strong colour bar so we decided to cut the shell on just one side to reveal the colour tantalising us from the sides. As you can see (picture below) the colour is awesome but a patch of sand in the middle was not what we had hoped for. That's the high's and low's of mining though! This shell will be available for purchase in our shop very soon! Dan & Renee.
Opmerkingen