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UNTOLD: WHAT IS OPAL FEVER?
20 MAY 2024
Located in the remote South Australian outback, Coober Pedy is characterised by its oddities – attracting everyone from Hollywood directors to vagabonds seeking out an alternative lifestyle under the surface.
But thousands call this place home, all searching for the same thing beneath the dusty red plains: treasure. Coober Pedy is the 'opal capital of the world' and just about anyone can come to the outback and find a kaleidoscopic gem. It’s an entrancing proposition – one that infected miners Dan Measey and Matt Graham with ‘opal fever’. Matt says it’s more contagious than COVID-19, while Dan describes it as a beautiful affliction. So, what is this thing that has left the pair possessed by the search for Australia’s national gemstone?
While 'opal fever' is not a physical illness, it is terminal. “Opal fever is way more contagious than COVID, that's what I say to people,” Matt says.
“It's everything. When you can’t stop thinking about it, you dream about, you just want to get back at it, that’s opal fever,” Matt shares.
It’s a feverish pursuit. An obsession. A possession. Once you catch it, it will keep drawing you back to the Martian, moonscape-like opal fields that pucker the plains surrounding Coober Pedy. It’s a fever that has infected thousands since opal was first discovered in Coober Pedy back in 1915, with discoveries made in the following years at nearby Mintabie and Andamooka. Coober Pedy quickly became a beacon for vagabonds, grifters, migrants and miners – all sold by the same dream, as Matt puts it; “the potential of going out there and becoming a millionaire…overnight”.
Meet Dan Measey and Matt Graham
Welcome to Coober Pedy
Hidden from plain sight between Adelaide and Alice Springs, it’s hard to draw a line around Coober Pedy. It won’t be defined or placed within borders – you can’t see where it begins or ends. “It sort of probably does look like the moon, not that I’ve ever been there,” Dan muses. The town is partially obscured by what appears to be thousands of giant ant mounds. “We live underground,” Dan explains. “We run by our own clock, and we do things our way.” Those ant mounds – ranging between three and seven feet tall – are evidence of house-sized holes that were cut into the rocky ranges, making dug outs (underground homes). Those same bulldozer cut piles – made up of ochre red dirt and stark white sandstone – also mark the countless one-man mining sites that dot the opal fields encircling this town.
Matt and Dan are opal miners
“It’s a total contrast…you look at all the cities in Australia [and] really, [if I] put you in the middle [of them], you’d hardly know the difference,” Dan says. “But put someone in Coober Pedy and they’ll know they’re not back at home, that’s for sure.” The centre of town is covered by a veil of tangerine dust, as though the facades of the local businesses are slowly being rewilded. It makes for a tonal portrait of a town surviving in the harshest of climates. “(Visitors) definitely see an environment that looks quite hostile, quite alien, but they also get a look at… a totally different lifestyle and a different way of life,” Dan explains. “The landscape's sparse, but it's still beautiful. There's lots of the Breakaways country here…it's still got its own beauty, even though it’s not green and wet,” Dan shares.
Dan Measey
Who lives in Coober Pedy?
If the town itself looks like Mars, then who are the Martians? “I’ve survived out in the other world, I have done it – I’ve made money. I’ve been through it…but to me, this is home, this is the sort of person I am,” Dan says. Dan was raised in the heart of the South Australian outback, by a family of opal miners. “I think it’s in my blood,” he quips. He can still recall finding his first opal at age 11, while ‘noodling’ (sifting through mining waste for any forgotten opal) through a pile of discarded dirt. While 1,566 people officially call this underground town home, the boom-and-bust nature of treasure hunting makes for a transient population.
Dan Measey
Dan has seen many people try, and fail, to thrive. The ones that stay are a special type of person, Dan’s type of person. “My people, I guess, are people that love opal,” he explains. “[They] love the outback and the desert.
“They're people who are going to make their own way… they're not reliant on a system or wages or salaries. They want to do it the way they want to do it, and they'll crash and burn to do it… unencumbered by [the] rest of society's restrictions and theories and practices.”
People like New South Wales couple Matt Graham and Rachel Crothers. “I'd say opal drew me here [but] way of life kept me here,” Matt shares. "Way of life, I’d say freedom. I’d say the calmness, like the work you put in [here] is what you get out. That’s life, Coober Pedy is a small version of life."
It would be nice to find a million bucks so I could retire and go opal mining. Matt Graham
The magnetic pull of the outback
Rachel and Matt were busy ticking off an item at the top of thousands of people’s bucket lists – driving a lap of Australia – when they were first drawn to Coober Pedy. Stuck in nine to five jobs in Sydney, the pair were desperate for something more – a deeper connection to the world around them, without a concrete jungle blocking the signal. “Well, we kind of set a purpose, we [wanted] to find ourselves …like ‘what's our purpose in life?’ kind of thing,” Rachel shares. The pair were hoping that, after seeing more of the country than most, they would discover a place that felt like home.
“We got towards the end [of our trip] and we were like, ‘what's next?’…we didn't find our place [to call home], but we did actually find it. We just didn’t know it yet,” Rachel muses. While the couple continued their journey of Australia, leaving Coober Pedy in the rear-view mirror, they took with them a handful of opal and an innocent curiosity to tinker with it.
But, Matt was transfixed by one simple truth. Coober Pedy is probably the only place in Australia where absolutely anyone, so long as they aren’t afraid of an honest day’s work, can apply for a permit to dig a hole that could make them a millionaire. “Yes, we could move anywhere,” Matt says. “We could go and get a mortgage, I could go back to a nine to five or five to nine. But there’s freedom here...I've been on a real spiritual journey, I guess you could say, finding myself and finding truth in life.”
What he hasn’t found yet, though, is a cure for his fever. “Now it's my whole life. I dig [opal], I cut it, I make jewellery, I sell it,” Matt says. The pair now own one of the only ‘end-to-end’ opal businesses in South Australia – Placid Gems – hand-making jewellery that uses the opals they also mined.
Maybe we are a little bit mad because of what we do. Dan Measey
Matt says he is living the dream mining for opal
So what is opal fever?
Matt lives by a simple motto; “it would be nice to find a million bucks so I could retire and go opal mining”. “I’m already living the dream,” he explains. “I love what I do, it pays the bills. You can find a million bucks, so there’s always that ‘oh, you never know when it’s going to stop’.” It’s this lotto of life, this dance with the devil, that has Dan addicted too.
Dan in his workshop
He couldn’t stay away, even after years spent living and working interstate – something simmered just beneath his skin. An itch he couldn’t scratch. “The itch to find that something, or that special stone, never goes away,” Dan explains. “I don’t have a million-dollar target, a two-million-dollar target or even a $20 million dollar target, because if I found opal worth $20 million, I’d still be looking for that special thing, [even if] I don’t really know what it is.”
Matt digging for opal using a pick
Dan wakes up every day, steps onto his mining claim, looks out to the hazy red horizon and faces an inescapable reality. “I don’t believe that one percentage or point one per cent [has] been found,” he muses. He knows that beneath his boots lies a million dollars that he may never reach, an iridescent treasure lying dormant for more than 15 million years.
A million dollars can be in a Tupperware container. It's just never ending; we'll never get there. It's forever. Dan Measey
Matt says he is living the dream mining for opal
Both Matt and Dan concede that it’s a “sickness,” but one they’ve happily contracted. “[I’m] addicted by opal, excited by opal…[when] it’s something you’ve looked for, for so long, it’s what drives you. It’s what your whole day and night are focused around,” Dan shares. “I see potential [in the mine fields]. My brain is going, ‘how much is out there?’ Like, look at all that expanse that I can just see now, it’s tens of millions of dollars. “That could be the world’s best opal sitting right there, in [the ground] I can see, and I can't get it.” They both come from completely different worlds, but together, they are teetering on the edge. Of discovery. Of riches. Of sanity and insanity.
Discover it for yourself
Dan, who appears in the latest season of Discovery’s Outback Opal Hunters series with his partner Renee, is hoping to share that very thrill - the itch to find something more – with people who visit Coober Pedy. Thousands are drawn to the oddball town each year - whether it’s to see the set of films like Mad Max, discover how people live underground or to visit the primary source of the world’s opal.
Dan and Renee – who have just established Unearthed Australian Opal - take visitors to their opal mine, so they can experience the real deal and have a crack at finding opal. “I’m proud to be a part of the industry. I'm proud to contribute my little bit to Coober Pedy,” he says. “If I look back on it, as long as I've been part of the industry and tried to promote opal and Coober Pedy, I will be proud.”
Feel the opal fever coming on? Scratch the itch by hopping on a ‘unearthing opal experience’ tour with the Unearthed Australian Opal team, who will immerse you in a hands on experience hunting for the almost mythical gemstone.
