Dave and his father drive to Yowah, a remote Queensland opal town where the world-famous Yowah opal is found across a 20-km² area. The opal trade runs on cash, and the town of 50-60 permanent residents swells to 250 in winter, attracting self-reliant people who build homes from shipping containers, old buses, and station remnants.
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So here we are coming into Yawa. I'm Dave and this is my dad. Dad, how do you get to Yawa?
Yawa is located in southwest Queensland off the Mitchell Highway. What you do is at Connemara, which is about 200 kilometers south of Charleville, at Connemara you head west on the Adventure Way on the road to Thargomindah, and you go on Thargomindah through to Yulo, and past Yulo about 14 K's you turn north going heading towards Quilpie and Tomb Pine. And after about 60 K's, you turn to your left to Yawa. It's about another 20 K's. And Yawa is the spot where the world-famous Yawa opal nut is found. Only about 20-kilometer area in the whole entire world is this found, and it's in Yawa.
Wow. So we just went past the house we were staying in and also 3 opal shops, I think, already on the video because there is a lot of opal in Yawa, at least a lot of opal being sold. It's funny, Dad, in the years we've been coming here, how many people are selling opal doesn't seem to equate to how many people will tell you they're finding opal. Why is that?
Well, opal is pretty much a cash business, and being a cash business, nobody wants to make you think— let you think they're doing very well. And so if you ask anybody how they're doing, they're just getting by. But yet it seems strange because lots of people have opal to sell and do sell it. And many times you can get a more attractive purchase by dealing directly with the miner who's dug the gem out of the ground.
Now, tell us a bit about some of these houses. Some of them look like houses you'd see on any street in Sydney or Melbourne, and some of them look really creative.
People here in the opal fields start with literally nothing and can make a house out of leftovers that other people have left behind. Some houses are bits and pieces from stations that are no longer being used because they've been amalgamated into larger stations. Some are made out of shipping containers. Some are made out of old buses, caravans, and bits and pieces of sheet metal. And even, you even see houses here that are made in and around the trees without even taking the trees out.
Wow. So I guess we don't want to talk about specific personalities here in Yahweh, but what kind of person would you say Yahweh draws?
Yahweh draws the real unique type of person, the adventurous, the person that really wants to literally get away from it all. Everybody here has a story, and everybody has that story many times in their closet, and you don't know what the whole story is. But there are some wonderful people out here. And what's really unique about Yawa is if somebody really is in need, everybody shows up to help.
Yeah, that's so true of most Australians. Um, when we looking at Yawa, I've noticed a couple things as we've gone through. There's been, uh, houses that look like just normal houses. Would there be people that aren't interested in opal that actually just live in Yawa?
Interestingly enough, there are. There are people that enjoy this desert way of life, and in the middle of the summer, we're talking upwards of 50 degrees, and about a quarter of the town lives here all year round. Don't ask me how. And some of these people do not mine, do not sell, do not cut opal. They are just here for the environment.
So you say a quarter of the people, how many would that be that are here year round?
There's about 50 to 60 people live here year round and probably 250 that live here in the winter.
So I also saw two caravan parks in this small town. What's that about?
Well, there's the commercial caravan park that offers powered sites, amenities block with toilets and showers, and very nice and next to the store that has petrol, the store and the post office. And then there's a free caravan park, interestingly enough, that has free hot showers because of the thermal bore that provides hot water. It also has free toilets and a free place to park your caravan, although no powered sites.
So come on out to Yawa, have a look around, and do some fossicking and see if you can find some opal.
