How I'd love to visit you, and go dig for opals. I've read lots of magazine accounts of the people who comprise the opal fields. I've dug Mexican opal, which isn't as spectacular. The matrix is rusty red and the colors are somewhat limited. But the black Australian stuff? Oooooooh. The white isn't bad, either, especially if made as a "doublet," where you glue a white cabachon to a polished black piece of obsidian behind it to reflect the light and form a backdrop for the colors.