Andamooka residents embrace mining town’s unique attributes

A struggling mining town remains resilient in the face of economic downturn, population scarcity and then a murder trial.

Miner, Jim Blackmore sitting on a digger in Andamooka SA. Picture: Ben Clark

The urge to search for opals can strike anytime for the miners of the remote outback township of Andamooka.

It’s an urge many of them can’t explain, but when it strikes, they swing into action.

“Sometimes in the middle of the night when the full moon is out, you throw your head up at the sky and then start digging,” miner Stefan Bilka says with a wink.

Bilka is one of Andamooka’s long-term residents. He arrived in 1968 after immigrating from Czechoslovakia, and, as the town’s undertaker, has been responsible for burying everyone who has died in the town in the past few decades.

Andamooka has always been a unique place to live, but the town, about 600km north of Adelaide, is in the spotlight after the death of opal miner Paul Tanzer in 2019 and the subsequent trial of long-time local Brian McFarlane, who was found guilty of murder after an 11-day trial last month.

Stefan Bilka standing outside the entrance of an abandoned Opal Mine Shaft. Picture: Ben Clark

The murder and trial has separated the town and as Mr Bilka charges through a winding labyrinth of opal mines, he reflects on McFarlane’s fate.

“Personally, I don’t believe that he’s a murderer,” he says, weaving through the underground of Andamooka.

McFarlane previously took Mr Bilka to court over an incident involving with a microphone at a town meeting and the two have been feuding for years.

“For the record Brian’s not a friend of mine, I have had quite a few problems with him.”

Mr Bilka says, then drops the subject and returns to his tour of Andamooka.

“At first when you find opal you don’t think about how much money it’s worth, you just look at it.”

Andamooka SA Machinery yard. Picture: Ben Clark

He says he enjoys the freedom of labour associated with opal mining from his backyard, the ability to wake up on the wrong side of the bed, look outside and say “not today.”

Like many in Andamooka, a town with a fluctuating population of between 150 and 300 (depending on who you ask), he enjoys finding inspiration for a dig at the proverbial drop of a helmet.

With many of the town’s inhabitants migrating from different pockets of the world in the hopes of finding opal, the residing population is built from rich histories.

As he walks through the underground mine, Stefan describes past ledgers of success and failure for the fluctuating prospectors that have flocked to Andamooka since opal was first discovered in 1930.

He says many have slept overnight in the cool damp of the underground, talks of a select few who have made fortunes and even speaks of an “unpopular” mining inspector who died after being shot “sometime in the 70s.”

The Andamooka Cemetery gate. Picture: Ben Clark

Stefan Bilka standing inside an abandoned Opal Mine Shaft in Andamooka. Picture: Ben Clark

Overview of the houses in Andamooka SA with Mine Hills. Picture: Ben Clark

Numbers at Andamooka Primary School stand at 24, and principal Bronte Stanford is proud of the access students have with teachers.

Mr Stanford moved to Andamooka at the beginning of the year to head the school and immediately formed a strong connection with the town and its inhabitants.

“Andamooka is a very unique town, a very proud town, a very resilient town,” Mr Stanford says as he manned the BBQ at the school’s parent-teacher night.

Principal of Andamooka Primary School, Bronte Stanford with teacher Shannon Crowhurs. Picture: Ben Clark

“Even though Roxby came in next to it, it’s found a way to survive.

“Some families are here through circumstance, with cost of living going through the roof they can find a way to exist here.

“They’ve on several occasions offered to bus everybody from Andamooka to Roxby and shut the school but Andamooka has said no thank you.”

“It’s a fiercely independent town.”

Andamooka is home to roughly 250 people. Picture: Ben Clark

Residents get their water from a refill station near the caravan park. Picture: Ben Clark

Miner Jim Blackmore has lived in Andamooka for 40 years and watched the town ebb and flow based on mining prospects.

“It’s a bit like the Assyrian empire, it’s up here one minute and down here the next and that’s the mining game,” Jim says while lighting a smoke.

“Now we’re in a bit of a trough simply because BHP pulled the pin back in 2012 on the big Roxby expansion but now we’re hoping for some sort of announcement in June.

“It’s only rumours at the moment but hoping it’s going to be very significant.”

For local artist “Cal the Stoner”, Andamooka and its rich opal resource has served as a means to facilitate the creation of several eccentric art pieces, including his masterwork “The Andamooka Opal Tiger”.

Cal moved over from Victoria four years ago in his bus with the stone required for the tiger, adding claws, eyes and fangs with opal sourced from the township.

The project took him three years to complete.

Stonemason and sculptor Cal the Stoner with his intricately carved Andamooka Opal Tiger. Picture: Ben Clark

A school bus perched on the outskirts of Andamooka. Picture: Ben Clark

“I started in St Kilda, too complicated, too easy to play up in St Kilda,” Cal says. “Because when I moved here I had no idea it would have opal in it, it was only a fluke that I moved to an opal town basically.”

The town has a history of suspicious fires, with three houses and the former town pub, The Opal Hotel, set alight in two days in December, 2021.

McFarlane’s house was also burnt down following his arrest.

Brian McFarlane's front property. Picture: Ben Clark

SAPOL deemed the fire at McFarlane’s house as “suspicious” but no one was ever charged.

Many of the townspeople of Andamooka don’t wish to speak about the altercation between Mr Tanzer and McFarlane, some simply saying the latter wasn’t welcome there anymore.

Pensioner Paul Kileen, agreed to talk about the aftermath of Tanzer’s death on a hilltop at the Andamooka Bible Church, for privacy.

Inside the church walls, he describes witnessing the aftermath of the destruction of Georgina Jensen’s house, the location of Paul Tanzer’s fatal stabbing.

“The interesting thing about Georgina’s is that apparently nobody saw it,” Mr Kileen says.

“I remember thinking the roof looks funny, has the wind blown the roof off?

“Then I saw the whole thing was crushed.

“In this town people leave their keys under the seat because no one is going to steal your equipment here so it could’ve been anybody.”

Mr Kileen questions the verdict of McFarlane’s trial.

“I just don’t see how a panel of 12 people could unanimously find him guilty or murder based on the situation, it just doesn’t check out,” he says.