Opal Eggs Of Fire (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780648312185)

A three year drought has a disastrous effect on South Australian farmers. The Nickols family are to have their farm sold by the bank. Crops and sheep are dying . John and his son travel to Coober Pedy, where their neighbours have found enough opal to pay off their debts. John and Tony hire a drill to drill for opal on a claim next to Bert and Harry. The hopeless attitude prevails while drilling until late in the day the drill brings up some thick good quality opal They drill four more holes around the find and drill up opal in each of the holes. This is a large seam of opal. They head off home and bring an old bulldozer off the farm to dig for the opal. Over the next three weeks they find hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of opal. This is sold. When digging deeper they find a group of four dinosaur eggs which have been turned to opal over millions of years. The opal is top quality black opal worth millions of dollars. The town thieves hear about the find and conspire with a dishonest opal buyer to try to steal the opal and money the farmers have in an old safe. The thieves have another set of keys for this safe. John and Tony have had a premonition as they had seen the crooks watching as they dug the eggs out of the ground. They head off home at night. the thieves only get some almost valueless opal from the safe. The thievs head to Adeladi to rob the opal buyer when he is trying to sell the opal. They manage to rob the house when the buyer and the opal dealer are together. They steal a case filled with four million dollars and the opal eggs. Before leving Adelaide they buy some alcohol to drink on the way back to Coober Pedy. All three men are very intoxicated. About fifty kilometers from Coober Pedy the driver goes to sleep and runs the car up a roadside embankment. One man is tossed out of the car and breaks his neck. The other two are trapped inside with their legs caught under the dashboard. The opal eggs have been tossed around in the cabin of the car. One of htese eggs breaks. There is something hatching from this broken egg. It has been in the egg almost from the start of time. It is extremely hungry. I tis looking for its first feed. Good nightmare material.