About Australian Opal
Australia is famous for it's opal back to its first inhabitants. The aboriginal people have "dreamtime stories" or stories about the very beginning, about opal and how opals came to be.
Australia's primary opal mined and exported is the white precious opal, from places like Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge, but also mines the worlds majority of black and boulder opal as well.
Discovered in the late 1800's, commercial viability was unstable until 1915 when a group of gold prospectors found an outcropping which started an opal rush becoming Coober Pedy or "White Man in a Hole".
Opal forms where ever there is a void for the silica to form so many fantastic and unusual fossils have been found made from opal in the Australian opal fields.