This Turquoise (our "TurqOZ") was mined in the excessive heat of the Central Australian desert by a public company in the late 1960's and into the early 1970's after which another company took over until mid 1970's.
It apparently is the only commercial Turquoise mine that has ever operated in Australia.
Most of the production was shipped to USA where the Turquoise jewellery craze was still strong, although in a decline.
For the most part, the rough was sold to traders in that industry who in turn gave it to Amerindians on their reservations to be made into genuine handmade Amerindian Turquoise Jewellery.
The USA Government contributed “Dollar for Dollar” what the Indians were paid by the traders.
This was in the days of Mail Order Catalog selling; today replaced by Etsy, eBay, Amazon and the likes.
And, to receive an order for 10,000 small simple Turquoise rings in 12 designs (120,000 handmade pieces!) from a Mail Order company, were not unheard of.
Back in Australia, the mining company ran into a bit of bother as it was forced to close down its mining operations due to its operations approaching an Aboriginal sacred site. (Definitely "conflict free"...!)
Besides that, they had basically run out of Turquoise bearing ground and the mining was no longer viable, anyway.
As a consequence of that, the company decided to dispose of all of the rough Turquoise it had on hand when closing.
The total of the rough amounted to just a couple of hundred kilos and I bought the lot.
From that, some rough were sold, some made into Silverform Jewellery and some cut into calibrated stones.
The rest, about 150 Kg was just stored away and as the saying goes; “Out of sight, out of mind!”, and how true is that not!
So, having been bought in the mid 1970's and then stored away until it’s recent “discovery” whilst cleaning up a garage, nearly half of a Century later, it's again available and this time for Australians to hopefully enjoy and appreciate it.
