Silent Jim Reid
“Silent Jim” Reid. Photograph: 'Opals are Lucky', Weekly Times, 4 July 1925, p. 9.
James Robert Watson “Silent Jim” Reid was born on 26 November 1879 at Gilbert, Dublin, South Australia, son of William Areelus Reid and Elizabeth Morrow.
Reid was present on the Lightning Ridge fields by the late 1910s. He was one of the early miners on Bald Hill, where he and Phil James found a significant stone in 1918. The opal, later known as Silent Jim’s 600, was a large slab of seam opal, almost solid gem material with a thin potch backing, and small enough to fit into a tobacco tin. Reid sold the stone to Ernie Sherman for £600 (hence its name), after buying out his partner’s share. Reid also worked on Jim Steadman’s claim in the 1920s. By the early 1930s he held a good claim at Hornet’s Rush.
Beyond mining, Reid was quite famous for an unusual personal endeavour in the ‘20s. In 1924, he set out on a walk around Australia. He left Sydney, travelling through Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and back into New South Wales. Along the journey, he would sell opals from Lightning Ridge — 1,000 stones for £1 each — and partly purposed the walk as an effort to disprove the superstition that opals were unlucky. Reid was described as a short, sun-tanned gem merchant who travelled lightly, avoided lingering in towns, and averaged long daily distances on foot.
“I reckon this walk of mine will prove that opals are not unlucky,” he said. “I haven’t struck wild wild blacks or alligators, like the other men say they saw. I got my opals at Lightning Ridge, in New South Wales, and have been celling them at £1 each.
”I don’t expect to get any money out of the trip, but if I succeed in advertising opals and in proving that they are not unlucky, I shall be quite satisfied. I don’t spend much time in towns like the other walkers, and that is how I can get round in nearly half their time.””
Reid later became an opal buyer. He was a skilled ‘noodler’ (or ‘specker’; one who finds opal on the surface) and is credited with perhaps being the first to use a shear blade to slice opal dirt on surface dumps.
“Silent Jim” Reid died in 1944 at Liverpool, New South Wales, aged 65.
Article: Research by Russell Gawthorpe and Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: ‘A Walk Around Australia - An Attempt to be Made by Man with Opal’, Sunraysia Daily, 2 February 1924, p. 3; ‘Walking Around Australia’, Barrier Miner, 13 September 1924, p. 8; ‘Opals are Lucky - Walk Around Australia’, Weekly Times, 4 July 1925, p. 9; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, pp. 65, 137, 158, 160; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, pp. 65, 78-79, 134; A Journey With Colour: A History of Lightning Ridge Opal 1873-2003, Len Cram, 2003, p. 168.