This is an Australian adventure/comedy story for all ages which while fiction in content is based almost 100% on facts happening on-going in the area. The story centers around two leading characters: Rusty, a 40-year-old opal miner, and Kate, a 60-year-old, tough-as-nails woman who raises sheep and cattle when she is not mining opal. This story, I believe, captures a sense of intrigue and calamity that continues to happen between opal miners, "ratters (people who steal from legitimate opal miners), and animals of the Outback area of Lightning Ridge, Australia.
Australia is unique in that it is the home of 95% of the world's known black opal reserves, all buried beneath the dry Outback soil in a small area of New South Wales known as Lightning Ridge. This is an area where many crooks, cutthroats, and thieves come to hide away from civilization. Everyone is highly suspicious of his neighbor and of what he is doing. The paranoia of these people as they go about their daily lives, when it comes to mining and selling black opal, cannot be exaggerated.
