Yowah nuts are found in the opal fields of Yowah in central Queensland.
As the name suggests the opal is formed naturally like a nut.
This field does produce a large quantity of yowah nut but unfortunately
most have no color and are just brown ironstone with no color or pattern.
The opal miner will work splitting these yowah nuts open and
must crack many open to find any color. This is the reason why the nut is cut
into two pieces as the opal miner cannot see any color and it is rare to see colour
in a yowah nut.
Some opal miners say they crack open thousand nuts and if
they lucky a few might have color, but to find gem color is very rare and these
nuts sell for thousands of dollars and many opal collectors should have one in
their collection.
Sometime the opals are sliced as a pair and it is extremely rare
to see an yowah nut polish as an egg
Further Reading
