Josef Schellnegger

I was introduced to Joe during the time of writing the Opal Nomenclature for the Academy. Joe is a past President of the Lightning Ridge Miners Association and the convener of the Lightning Ridge Opal Advisory Service. Joe’s assistance to Opal Academy has been many years of discussion and advice on types, values descriptions of Lightning Ridge Opal. Also discussions on opal mining and a miners view of formation with many discussions underground in the opal fields. Joe related his life in Lightning Ridge to me in the following way.

A LIFE STORY IN OPAL

Joe Migrated from Austria to Australia in August 1956 and considered the move to be an adventure rather than anything else. The move as so many others was travelling by boat, and the first point of call was in Fremantle Western Australia. Then on to Tasmania where Josef’s first job was at the Mount Lyell copper mine in Western Tasmania for a year. Moving to Sydney via Wollongong and then Sydney in 1958, and in the years following met Julia his wife married in 1961. Joe’ sons Dean and Neil were born in 1962 and 1963, With Michelle being born later after the family’s move to Lightning Ridge in 1976.

Joe had always been interested in rocks and semi-precious stones and in the early 60’s visited Lightning Ridge for a weeks trip, on return to Sydney he purchased some opal cutting equipment and Coober Pedy rough opal from a lapidary store. A person described by Joe as an older timer gave some advice on how to cut the opal. During 1969, the family spent three months mining in Lightning Ridge, and after returning to Sydney Joe manufactured a hoist for opal mining, along with other equipment, “during his spare time” as at the time he was employed at Colgate Palmolive.

The next part of the journey was the purchase of a truck and caravan , the house in Sydney was sold, Joe resigned from his employment and then in January of 1971 moved to the Ridge, staying in the caravan park, thinking about how massive this move was, with little in the way of finance, and considering how daunting this move was, in Joe’s words, “a bit scary”.

Joe’s adventure was related to me in the following way:

“Mining in Lightning Ridge in the 1970’s was very hard. There were no drilling machines so you had to sink holes by hand, with picks, shovels and jackhammers. Somebody had wind up the dirt with a windlass, in my case that was was my wife! It took weeks to sink a hole to 15 metres. Also there were no blowers, diggers or washing plants, however later on there was the automatic hoist, and for sorting, a dry puddler.”

In following years things improved a block of land was purchased in 1976 in town on Morilla street, the caravan moved on site, and provided accommodation until the hose was finished. Finally a reasonably good claim was found and Joe cut the opal mined himself, and life improved.

“ My (opal) mining career was reasonably successful, I survived two (underground mining) cave-ins, now we have three generations of opal miners in our family!”

As time progressed the Lightning Ridge Miners Association (LRMA) was formed and Joe became a member, and then a director of the Association for 8 years and later a life member. In 1982, under the auspices of the LRMA, a group of people formed what became known as the “Opal Advisory Service”, which included a variety of people, experienced opal miners, opal cutters, and buyers. It was realised by this group that that there was a need for some standards regarding opal rather than just saying this is a lovely opal.

It was with colleague Jack Silman that Joe began to have discussions and meetings with opal interested parties in the opal industry to work towards a nomenclature for opal. As a beginning it was decided to consider a scale for the bodytone (or lightness and darkness of the background colour of opal. It was decided at this time to use the Geological Society of America’s “Rock colour chart”. This was (and still is) used as a benchmark for this part of opal discussion.

In 2002 Joe wrote an article on opal classification for the Australian Gemmologist. (the article is available, Volume 21 Number 7 July-September 2002), Joe’s advice remains pertinent:

“ Pricing opal is difficult because each opal is an individual piece, no two are alike.”