Ronald James Gardiner was a New Zealand born opal cutter and collector who lived on the Grawin and Glengarry fields in the 1960s and 1970s. He married Elizabeth Neilson in New Zealand in 1942.

Gardiner was an opal cutter and fossicker. He was cutting at the Grawin in the early 1960s.

Gardiner operated the Grawin Bush Moozeam, a collection of relics and displays intended to preserve the culture and folklore of the opal fields. He was descirbed as a loner with a burning ambition to formally open a museum he had been developing for years, dedicated to the “hardy pioneers of faraway days.” He credited a young woman, Julie Dawson, with inspiring the project and dedicated the museum to her.

The Moozeam was assembled from an eclectic range of objects: mining equipment, photographs, domestic items, signs, memorials. The Moozeum included the hut and story of Kurt Stevens and Bill Klein, discoverers of the Light of the World opal at the Grawin. Gardiner proposed a memorial gate to Charles Saunders, credited with founding the Grawin field in 1908, as well as a small monument to Lightning Ridge and Glengarry founder Charlie Nettleton.

In April 1974, Ron Gardiner was photographed marching in the miners’ rights demonstrations at Lightning Ridge, and he positioned the Moozeam as a living argument for the preservation of early mining heritage. Gardiner had planned to have Zack officially open the museum, but Sack died in August 1976 before this could occur.

After Gardiner’s death, the Moozeam’s fate became…complicated. The museum was ultimately moved to Lightning Ridge), unfortunately by the time of the move some of the more valuable and historically significant items had disappeared.

Ron Gardiner died in June 1977 at Blacktown Hospital after a period of illness, and was buried at Pine Grove, Rooty Hill.

Article: Research by Russell Gawthorpe and Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Lightning Flash Newspaper, 12 September 1973, 18 April 1974, 5 August 1976, 30 June 1977, 14 May 1981, 30 June 1994, 6 April 1995; L. Rowlands, ‘Opals, Muscat and Beer’, Walkabout, vol. 36, no. 2, 1 February 1970, p. 44-46; ‘Will Our Opal History be Lost’, Western Magazine, 4 June 1976, p. 7.