Opal Eggs of Fire

About the Book

The drought in South Australia was really biting hard, especially for the people in the marginal rainfall regions . The Nickols family at Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula were having a hard time after three bad drought years. Bank interest had sky-rocketed and all of the off-farm income as shearing or harvest work had dried up also, as the sheep and grain numbers had vanished. The bank is threatening to sell the farm to recover the debt. Neighbours of the Nickols Two bachelors Bert and Harry Kelly had been opal mining at Coober Pedy and had paid off the bank overdraft. John and Tony Nickols travel to Coober Pedy and drill onto a seam of good opal. The men find a nest of opal dinosaur eggs worth a lot of money .What ensues is some cunning thieves trying to rob them of their money and opal . These men are killed in an accident in a very strange way which makes world news and the opal eggs very famous.

About the Author

I was bought up on a farm near Port Lincoln South Australia. I attended a small school with about twelve pupils, which was near our farm . From seventh grade, I was sent to Adelaide to boarding school Prince Alfred College. I learnt stick up for myself and fight. I returned home to work on the farm. After leaving my parents farm, I worked in a few jobs. I got married to Glenys, then bought a small property near Elliston. The price of wool dropped by 50% in the first year. We tried to crop some of the rough stony country, but the crops were attacked by the kangaroos and emus. We sold this farm and bough a farm in a better area near Port Lincoln. My wife and I developed a lot of good farming land. I spent a lot of time rebuilding machinery to handle the development stage of the farm. After visiting our daughter and partner in Alice Springs we called into an opal mining town Mintabie. This was probably a mistake as we had never seen so much cash being thrown around in our life. We got ripped off a couple of times. I broke my leg working on the farm and was laid up for a long time. Then graduated to Coober Pedy on a part time basis .We purchased a medium sized bulldozer. We started to find some good opal but as the rock was very tough, I used some of my farming experience to develop a new tungsten tipped ripping tool. This worked very well and we patented it. I started to work with a multinational firm to develop this tool, but when the Financial Crisis hit worldwide, they walked away from the project. This book has been around for a long time, but I could not seem to be able to get the last few chapters right.