Opal is one of the world’s most beautiful and precious gemstones with 95% of the world’s Opal coming from Australia.
Opal takes millions of years to form inside of our planet earth and is extremely difficult to find and extract. The truly phenomenal thing about the Opal Gemstone is that it can display all sorts of stunning colors of the rainbow. Some types of Opal carry more dominant colors in their spectrum due to where they are found, but all types of Opal have the potential to carry beautiful rainbow flashes.
The “play of color” found in Opal is the result of interference and diffraction of light passing through tiny silica spheres in the microstructure of Opal. This means the bright rainbow colors of Opal, as they appear to the human eye, will move and change dramatically depending on the angle at which the stone is viewed as light refracts the silica spheres.
The trinity of Australian Opal mined in Outback Australia consists of the following:
Boulder Opal comes in a wide array of vibrant colors and patterns and is the strongest type of Opal as it is married to the Ironstone host rock with Winton, Queensland considered the capital of Boulder Opal Country. Black Opal has a dark body tone and can be the most valuable form of Opal which is mined around the town of Lightning Ridge located in Northern New South Wales. White Opal can be found in the Coober Pedy region and is widely known as the the capital for Australian White and Crystal Opal.
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