Outback Opal Hunters

Having spent some time down a few holes in opal mines, I can tell you that the vast majority of those who go chasing opals are nowhere near as lucky as the mob portrayed in this series. Funny that every team that ventured down in search of opal found it! If it happened to be as easy as that to find opal, the stone would be worthless.

Talk about manufactured garbage for the mass, dumb market ... this stuff is just about as believable as the television show "Married at First Sight" and the movie "The Blue Lightning".

Both my wife and I enjoy following the ups but mostly downs of the various groups of miners. Naturally some you get to like and wish goodluck others the opposite.

The guys have chosen a tough road for themselves but with the odd exception , face the many failures with fortitude.

The buying agents naturally seem not to reward the miners efforts too well but trade on the fact that most miners are desperate for a few dollars to buy food or diesel. All human life is thus on display.

It's the "opal" version of Deadliest Catch or Ice Road Truckers. And just like in the other series, nothing really happens. The voice-over tries to emphasize some urgency - running out of money or time - and creates some sort of tension: "Have they found a real big opal?" And - of course - they haven't. So the episode soldiers on from location to location, about 3 or 4 in total. At the end of the episode none of the lives has really changed - except for mine since I lost about 40 minutes of my time.

Cool to see real life treasure hunters doing there thing love the young guys giving it a go.

This programe is a small clipse into the lives of people effected by the bug of opal-fever of colour and the potential to get rich quick, as the episodes suggest! But in-the-end, when these people are doing is very dangerous, not too mention the posibility of being robbed for their opal. Note that individual miners will invent there own terminologies to desbribe what they are doing in the process of opal mining. And yes it would appear that the producers are trying to create an atmosphere of dangerous urgency or desperate need to survive either from the mining or life-style. Though Its shows people what takes to mine and in this case aussie opal and practicality of what is needed and science uised but little geologist help not used in the episodes I watched in season 1. Still a great watch if you are like me ans wish you could mine for opal but know that will never happen! DJ