Coober Pedy is a fascinating place. A dirty dusty town of wandering dogs and disenfranchised aborigines; where the tough prospectors of yesteryear dug through the sandstone for incredible distances in the hope of striking a colourful stream of opal. The white stuff is useless. They call it potch and give bits of it to children at the many opal stores in town. The view over town is spectacular, not in its beauty, but in its desolation. The ochre-coloured hills are dotted with vents – a sign that a dwelling place lies beneath.
It acts as a metaphor for aspects of life itself. The real beauty of Coober Pedy – like many of its inhabitants – is hidden beneath the dry dusty earth. There are those who only look at the surface, who judge by appearance, who have little inclination to do the hard work of digging to discover the hidden gems that lie beneath every living person and experience.
In his classic song, “Anthem”, Leonard Cohen sings “There’s a crack, a crack in everything. That’s where the light gets in”. Opals are a bit like that. As the ancient oceans that covered this area gradually receded, silica solutions were deposited in the fractures and faults in the ground. Over 150 million years, the solutions in these faults have formed into that precious gem we call opal.
Over the past 14 years I have journeyed with many people through periods of tremendous struggle and suffering – children who have lost a parent, parents who have lost a child, some who have experienced every manner of abuse, and others who have been left unloved by those whose responsibility it was to love. Life is full of struggle and grief. Our only way of avoiding this is to avoid living – and loving – altogether.
I have also discovered the colourful gems that arise from the raw suffering and deep fractures of such experiences – which strip away much of the pretence of Western culture. I have learned that laughter and tears are close companions; that engaging in suffering is the path to healing and growth, whilst denying suffering leads to bitterness and resentment; that the greatest drives in our humanness are love and fear (in this I differ markedly from Freud).
Most importantly, I have learned that beneath the surface of each being, amidst the dust and the dogs, the fractures and faults, lay streams of precious colour and life just waiting for those who are prepared to dig deep.
