6/28/01:  After a restful night, we had breakfast at the “Breakaway Cafe”.  Steve headed upstairs to the coffee shop to meet a miner.  A place and time was set for the viewing of opals (12:00 noon).  We checked out the Laundromat facilities and picked up a few groceries at the store.   Most everyone does their shopping on Thursdays as the produce truck comes in once a week from Adelaide on Thursday morning.    We walked to the TAFE to see about scheduling a 3-hour private class on opal carving for Steve.  The day for the class was set for Monday.  While we were at the TAFE, we were introduced to a miner from Mintabie (DanTucker)…and consequently were invited to see his mining operation, and possibly a parcel or two.  After a quick walk to the dugout (oops, locked ourselves out of the dugout), we hiked back to the coffee shop to meet the miner.  I noticed the interesting decor of the shop.  The room is filled with poker tables, clouds of smoke, and pin-up girl posters.  The shop seemed to be a men’s Croatian social club.  After seeing the parcel, we passed on it.  Soon after, we heard of another parcel for sale, and scheduled a viewing for tomorrow.

We headed out of town a bit, to visit some friends (we had met them last year).   Sharing some good stories and good laughs, we made arrangements to have dinner later in our stay.    We had dinner at Tom and Mary’s again, and were joined by a Yugoslavian man who just wanted to visit.  With a communication problem… and I don’t know which of us understood the least! Oh, my!