Australian Opal Centre set for 2025 opening
June has been a month of milestones for the new Australian Opal Centre at Lightning Ridge, with the 12-metre-high wall panels lifted on site.
Once complete, this architecturally designed and nationally significant museum will be an energy-efficient, two storey underground building, filled with glittering treasures and stories of the people who found them.
While there is now visual proof of construction, Australian Opal Centre CEO, Jenni Brammall, said the building has been progressing since last year.
“Construction has been underway since August 2023,” Ms Brammall said. “It’s a bit like an iceberg where there’s almost as much underground as there is above ground.
“There are eight massive concrete pillars underground that support what’s going on above ground,” she said.
The Centre will be built in stages and will contain magnificent permanent exhibitions, education and learning facilities, a cinema, gallery spaces, a spectacular opal vault, a research library, a laboratory, and underground gardens.
“It looks very dramatic at the moment with the 12-metre-high wall panels now erected,” Ms Brammall said. “The panels were prefabricated, incorporating beautiful local Cumborah gravel on the outside surfaces. The outside of the building will be coated with the beautiful local gravels that are all around the building.[…]
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I would luv 2 see s footpath from town to open cut as the road 2 it is a goat track