Jack Austin

John “Jack” De Bruno Austin was born on 7 April 1902 at Gisborne, Victoria, son of Frederick and Jessie Austin. He had one brother and four sisters. By the early 1920s he was on the New South Wales opal fields, arriving at Lightning Ridge in 1924 by horse and sulky. Later, he moved on to the Grawin.

Austin was an early opal miner on the Lightning Ridge fields. He worked alongside Bob Bishop and Jim Murray. At the Old Four Mile, Austin and Murray sold a single large opal, “extra black and red, about the size of the palm of your hand,” for £330, a very good price for the period.

He also worked the Vertical Bill’s. Austin and Bishop sold a 6-carat gem quality stone from Bill’s to buyer George Cowan, who later sold it through Percy Marks for £200. Cowan described it as the best opal he ever cut. It was eventually sold in England for around £400. Prior to leaving the country, it was displayed to the Hardy Jewellers staff in Sydney before export, who declared they were unlikely to see anything of its quality again.

Austin continued to mine through the Depression years of the 1930s. His later years were spent in South Australia. He died at Pimba on 21 December 1956, aged 54.

Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, pp. 38, 67, 72, 157; B. Smith, ‘As I Remember’, Lightning Flash Newspaper, January-June 1991.