The debt opal owes Tully Wollaston

Tully Cornthwaite Wollaston

As it fell to my lot to pioneer in turn each new opal field of Australia – Queensland, White Cliffs, Lightning Ridge and Coober Pedy, excepting only the first boulder – and market its product in Europe and America, I felt I was better equipped than most to tell the story of the Opal: Furthermore, the general and growing interest in the stone, now greatly stimulated by the Empire Exhibition, has encouraged me to make the attempt. “If my book is somewhat unorthodox in structure, it is but in keeping with much of the Opal which it describes.” This was Tully’s preface to his book Opal – the Gem of the Never Never, published by Thomas Morely and Co. in 1924. The book is a chronicle of the activities of Tully Cornthwaite Wollaston, the man who arguably founded and ensured the success of the Australian opal industry. It gives very little insight into the man himself. However, reading between the lines of his understated prose, it indicates that he was a man of great vision and determination. Slim and dapper in appearance, Wollaston was also a cultured, humane and religious man who loved children. He was hardy and resourceful in outback travel and “fair and square” in business. However, he tells us very little about his childhood and early adult years. Mention is made of his spending his early years in Port Lincoln, on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, and the fact that as a child, he had had a passion for collecting mineral crystals and coloured stones. His interest in lapidary was started and fostered by an old aunt. Wollaston’s involvement with opal started in November, 1888. He was 26, had a young wife and new-born daughter and was off to the Kyabra Hills in central west Queensland, to buy opal. He mentioned in passing that he had previously been “caught by the burst Silver Boom”, and had “preliminary canters in Australian ‘rubies’ and Tasmanian Sapphires”. He was fortunate not to be “caught” again, because he was off to find a miner named Joe Bridle, who had been reported as making a find at Kyabra – three years previously! His journey, together with a good bushman named Buttfield and an Aboriginal youth named Tomtit, was an epic of bushcraft and determination. Tully tells of how they travelled through the height of the worst drought then recorded and completed the trip in just seven weeks. Between Farina Station, near Marree, where they hired two riding camels, and Windorah, he describes days of temperatures of 110 degrees Farenheit (45°C) and more, dust storms, flies and mosquitoes.

Cattle were dying in large numbers, not for lack of water – there was plenty in Government bores and tanks – but due to a lack of fodder. They made 10- to 20-mile stages each day, and reached Innaminka on Coopers Creek in 23 days. His description of conditions at Windorah is amusing. Thirteen days’ march from Innaminka, the party arrived there on New Year’s Eve. The races were on and the town was full of boisterous, fighting drunks. It was “a dreary hole” to the men fresh in from crossing Sturt’s Stony Desert, and they chose not to mix socially with the locals. The miffed locals planned to pull some pranks on our travellers during the night but Tully guessed their probable intentions and cunningly shifted camp after dark. The locals were a bit peeved to find the camp empty but quickly found solace back at the pub.

The drought was broken by torrential rain on the 2nd of January, 1889. This was a great New Year’s gift for the country but the travellers were now inundated by frogs and mosquitoes! They faced disaster on the last day of travel because they did not carry enough water with them. By good fortune, they stumbled on a track which led them out of trouble. They explored and pegged four leases, which they registered in Windorah. Buttfield and Tomtit set up miners on the leases, bringing up supplies and equipment from Windorah on the camels. They were to return home overland when all was properly set up on the field.

Tully found Joe Bridle and bought his first parcel of stones. He tells of his disappointment during the first couple of days, when Joe showed him only rubbish. Finally, he saw fit to bring out the good ones and Tully realised that the trip had not been in vain for the syndicate of which he was the major shareholder. The parcel had good colour but most of the stones were small. The return trip was no picnic for Tully, though he did not go back across the desert, rather, first by buckboard for the 250 miles to Charleville, then by train back to Adelaide via Brisbane. Three days after his arrival at home he received news of Buttfield’s death. The seasoned bushman had made the most basic of mistakes – he went too far from camp without water, searching for the strayed camels. When he realised he was in trouble, he headed for a bore but perished a couple of miles from it. Tully returned to the leases to put affairs in order, then returned to Adelaide.

Eight days later he and his family were on a ship bound for London with his parcel of opal. The syndicate had raised the money for the journey. In addition, they sent a “purser” to the field to oversee their interests. He proved to be unreliable, passed worthless cheques and generally ruined the syndicate’s reputation on the fields. Meanwhile, in London, Tully faced a hard battle with the patronising, negative attitude of the jewellery “establishment”. The dealers could not comprehend that the gaudy Queensland stone would sell in a market place that was used to the anaemic Hungarian stone which had been supplied to the European market since the time of the Roman Empire. These gems had white matrix and very little colour. Finally, Tully convinced the firm of Hasluck Brothers of Hatton Garden, to take a small parcel for a trial run. Several cutters were hired and put to work. Their product sold well and returned “a handsome profit” mainly in the USA. It seems that the folk of the “Big Apple” had less preconceived ideas about what opals should look like! Upon his return to Adelaide, Tully found that all was not well with the syndicate The other members had little interest in actually mining gemstones. They were much more interested in getting rich by floating scrip. Does that sound like our paper mining boom of 1969 and 1970?

Anyway, Tully was very disappointed and withdrew from the syndicate, which folded soon after. Tully once more boarded the luxurious, air-conditioned trains and far less salubrious buckboard for his return to the Queensland fields. There he met with William Johnson, owner of the Little Wonder Mine. Once again, the miner showed only the rubbish, until he finally decided that he liked the cut of Tully’s jib. He went to his hiding place and returned with “60 pieces of red grained opal the size of walnuts”. Writing of his first sight of these beautiful stones some 40 years later, Tully still captured his wonder and excitement. He would have mortgaged his soul and given Bill Johnson the world for that parcel. They settled on a thousand pounds – quite a fortune in those days. Returning home again he found some samples from White Cliffs awaiting him. So, two days later, it was back to the old train and buckboard again, travelling through Broken Hill. The samples were like Hungarian opal – flat cakes of white matrix – but they had a brighter and better play of colour. The sample parcel had been sent by Charlie Turner and his partners, shearers who were shooting kangaroos during the off season at the time of their find.

Plaque commemorating Tully Wollaston’s importance to White Cliffs opal

Tully had great difficulty in deciding what to offer because he was not at all familiar with the stone and had no idea what it might fetch in London. He finally offered £140, and was nearly knocked down in the rush! Charlie and his mates had decided that if he didn’t offer at least £10, they would “chuck their find back into the bush and go back to shooting ‘roos”. Tully then raised the money for another trip to England. It is astounding to realise that he sailed this second time only 16 months after he left Adelaide for his first overland journey to Kyabra. It would be quite a feat with modern transportation and is almost incomprehensible in the conditions under which he achieved it. This time, Haslucks readily accepted some of his parcel and within a year they had six cutters working.

The opal, both Queensland and White Cliffs stones, sold as fast as they could cut it. Even allowing that the cutting equipment of the day may not have allowed quick work, it must have been a pretty big parcel to keep that team going for so long. The actual size of the parcel is one of the many things about which Tully’s book does not enlighten us. With Hasluck’s success, other dealers finally wanted rough stone as well. As the demand increased, Tully moved, over time, entirely to dealing in rough material. Opposition buyers on the fields made business brisk. His first venture to Lightning Ridge was made in 1903.

There he bought a parcel of black opal from Charlie Nettleton and his partner. Once again, he did not know how this new style of stone would sell in Europe. Surprisingly, in view of his now established reputation in the trade, it took him three years to get the black accepted. He spent the first two years in London working on establishing a market, with limited success, so he went to New York where he was ultimately successful. For the second time, it was the Americans who led the way in acceptance of a totally new form of Australian opal. Tully bought his first parcel of Coober Pedy stone in 1915. Survived by his wife, three sons and six daughters, Tully Wollaston died of cancer at the age of 68 on the 17th of July, 1931, at his Lower Mitcham home and was buried in St Jude’s Anglican churchyard, Brighton, Adelaide. His estate was sworn for probate at £17,719