White Cliffs Opal Fields

Opal was found at White Cliffs in 1889, and the field it opened up — a run of low, pale ridgelines in the far west of New South Wales — remains one of the few in Australia where the public can dig for it themselves. Under the Mining Act, anyone can fossick anywhere across the White Cliffs Historic Mining Reserve without a licence, working the unclaimed ground between registered leases, each marked by a numbered post at its corner. The rules are specific: no explosives or power tools, nothing dug past a metre, no more than twenty grams of stone taken in any 48-hour stretch. The find, when it comes, can be startling — White Cliffs is one of the only places on earth where opal replaced ikaite crystals rather than shells or wood, producing the so-called opalised pineapples found nowhere else. The heat drove many residents underground into dugout homes, several of which are now open to visitors. Bring your own tools; Wilcannia, the nearest town, is 94 kilometres east.