Jack McNicol

John "Jack" McNicol was a miner at Lightning Ridge between World War I and World War II. Born in Queensland on 6 September 1875, McNicol lived a varied life before coming to Lightning Ridge and later becoming famous for his discovery of The Pandora Stone.

A former circus clown, McNicol first came to Lightning Ridge in the 1920s. It was in 1928 that he made his name. Prospecting on the old Angledool field, in a claim adjacent to where Charlie Dunstan had found his own famous stone two decades earlier, McNicol sank a shaft after his mate Fred Bodel flipped a coin to determine where to dig. Beneath a fault in the sandstone, he uncovered a single, large stone, Pandora.

Descriptions of the stone vary: it weighed around 700 to 750 carats, measured roughly four inches long. One early description likened it to fossil bone, likely from a plesiosaur. Cut and polished by Harold Frazer and Poppy Wilson, it was transformed into a gem quality specimen weighing 590 carats.

McNicol famously refused an offer of ten £100 notes and a new Chevrolet from buyer Elsie Jenkins. He instead carried the stone around in a Capstan tobacco tin lined with cotton wool and kept it, for a time, in a Sydney safe deposit box. By 1935, Pandora was again offered for sale. Some claimed it sold for £800; others that McNicol lost it after mortgaging the stone and failing to pay the bank charges. It was sold at Sotheby’s in London in 1965 for £6,200.

McNicol was a familiar sight on the field, travelling in a horse and sulky and racing his horse at local meetings.

Jack McNicol died in Queensland on 27 March 1937 at the age of 61. He is buried in Stanthorpe Cemetery.

• Jack McNicol @ Find a Grave.

Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Lightning Ridge: The Land of Black Opals, Ion L. Idriess, 1940, chapter XVII; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 155; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, pp. 65, 77; Walgett Spectator, 7 June 1928; 21 June 1928; Annual Report of the Department of Mines, NSW, 1928, pp. 30, 99.