Kelly Tishler from Lightning Ridge to feature in Outback Opal Hunters

“It’s like looking into a galaxy. You’ve got the red of a ruby, the green of an emerald, the blue of a sapphire, the purple of an amethyst …. you’ve got every colour. It’s like chasing a rainbow because you’ve got every colour of the spectrum,” Ms Tishler said.

“Why wouldn’t you want to have an opal? Opals are the best stone in the world.”

The third generation miner is one of the stars of a new Discovery Channel series Outback Opal Hunters. The shows covers mining in Lightning Ridge, Opalton and Coober Pedy.

Ms Tishler, who lives in Lightning Ridge, said had grown up around opals. Her Grandad moved from Gilgandra to Lightning Ridge with a couple of friends in the 1960s to start mining.

“My dad’s a miner, my brother’s a miner, my cousins are miners, second cousins, uncles, everybody, we’re all opal miners. At one stage we had 25 family members, all men but me, out here all mining in the 1990s,” she said.

“Growing up in a family of men and being the only girl in a number of generations my dad said to me ‘right, you’ve got two hands, two feet and a heartbeat, there’s nothing you can’t do that the boys can’t do’. There were no princess moments, dad just said ‘suck it up, you can go on the truck, you can get on the jackhammer, there’s nothing you can’t do’.”

Ms Tishler describes herself as an eternal optimist. Mining was a trade where you’d either make money or go broke, she said.

“It’s a good way to go broke but it would be great to see some younger generations, even some younger women come up here and have a crack at it. I’ll guarantee you’ll go broke before you find anything but you never know,” Ms Tishler said.

“It’s not all roses and chocolates, you’ve got to realise it’s bloody hard. There’s heat, there’s flies, you name it, anything can be thrown at you. It’s a hard lifestyle but there’s so much beauty and the town is just a real little ripper, it’s so community based. There’s every nationality of the world here but there’s no judgement. I really like that if someone is struggling we’ll all get in and help.”

However, at the same time, Ms Tishler said there weren’t many people coming to mine the opals because the expenses alone were so crippling.

“Everybody who mines deserves to find something because they’re putting everything on the line, they’re putting their heart and soul and their families and their partners and their bodies and they’re putting their bank accounts. If you don’t find opal you’ll go broke. There’s an old saying the boys say all the time ‘ from the shithouse to the penthouse and back to the shithouse in a week’, that can happen very quickly up here,” she said.

Ms Tishler said she has worked a range of jobs to help support the family when times in the mines are tough. From cleaning toilets to editing the local paper, she said she does what she has to do to pay the bills.

Knowing each day may be the one that changes her life is enough to keep luring her back to the black opals.

While she’s a third generation opal miner and her husband is second generation, Ms Tishler said she’s not sure if her three children will carry on the trade.

“Ideally I would love my kids to be opal miners, but they’ve seen how hard it is. I’d like to think they have an opportunity to not be in the opal mining but in my heart I’d love my girls to maybe learn another language and go into the marketing side of it,” she said.

Ms Tichler said she hoped Outback Opal Hunters would help increase the profile of the black opal, or as she refers to it, the queen of the gems.

“I go down to Sydney and I meet with people and one bloke said to me recently, ‘oh that’s right, you get opal from out of the ocean and I said ‘mate, do I look like I’ve got a pair of flippers?’” she said.