Silver
New South Wales is a major producer of silver in Australia, from 2015 to 2016 there were over 128 tonnes of silver produced in the region valued over 95 million dollars (NSW Government, 2022). With numbers such as these it is easy to see how Australia has the largest share of the world’s economic silver resources (Geoscience Australia, 2022). The five largest silver mines in Australia are the Cannington Mine, Mount Isa Mine, Tritton Mine, Golden Grove Mine, and the Dugald River Project Mine (Carmen, 2021). When mining for silver several tons of material must be gathered in order to produce just a few ounces of silver. In order to create silver, metals such as gold, copper, lead, zinc, and uranium are gathered and then silver is created as a by-product of those materials (The Natural Sapphire Company, 2022). The actual mining process for silver includes an open-pit method where heavy machinery is used to mine deep into the Earth and extract the metals (Reddy, 2022).
Opal
Opal is categorized as precious or common; opal is considered precious when it has a unique arrangement of color visible from all angles, on the other hand a common opal does not have that impressive display of color (Bernard, 2021). Australia currently produces 95% of the world’s opal in the jewelry industry and Australian opal is considered to be the finest in the world with the highest commercial value (Coggan, 2022). The way opal is mined in Australia depends on the region the opal mine is located in because of local regulations that must be followed. New South Wales only allows underground mining, in South Australia both underground and open cut mining are allowed, and in Queensland open cut mining is the main method used (Geoscience Australia, 2022). After mining the next step in gathering the opal is called “noodling”, this is when miners search for pieces of opal that may have been left behind in the piles of earth that were discarded (Zhou, 2020).
