Welcome to opalholicsanonymous.com where opal season lasts forever.

Dealers are buying Opal from other dealers as no miners have any to sell.
This makes for interesting meetings at the top end of town.
The relatively high aud/usd rate means old stashes will remain stashed until the AUD falls to 60 cents or so.

Yikes! Are the miners not finding any black opal, or are there fewer and fewer miners looking for it because of all the gov't red tape that costs miners so much? That's not good and I hope something happens to pull ya'll out of that quandary.

It is a combination of both.

Mining is like building a shop, fitting it out, then sitting out in the parking lot with a bucket, waiting for stock to fall into it.

Sounds familiar. I will say like the Neil Young Song; work is a habit I have even if the paychecks stopped.