Justin Thomas and Ruth Benjamin-Thomas
Black Opal Direct
$10,000 AOC Founders

Husband and wife team Justin Thomas and Ruth Benjamin-Thomas operate the global opal retail and wholesale business Black Opal Direct, which was started in 1961 by Justin’s father Jurgen. Renowned for their high quality opal products and informative and entertaining Youtube videos which have clocked up millions of views, Justin and Ruth are now Australian Opal Centre Founders, excited for what the new world-class facility will bring to the Australian opal industry, the Lightning Ridge community, and for lovers of opal around the world. 

“Justin’s father Jurgen Thomas emigrated from Germany in 1961 and decided to hitch a ride on a postal van to Lightning Ridge - he figured digging for opal was a better choice than landscaping in Sydney. He started mining and learnt to cut, and had a really good eye for it - Jurgen was an artist and always good with his hands, carving and whittling - so he started a company called Mosman Opal Cutting. 

Justin joined the business after finishing school and we like to say he had an apprenticeship of 10 years. Jurgen taught him to cut and he was extremely exacting. If there was a scratch or a polish mark or anything on the opal, his dad would give it back to him and tell him to start from scratch. Justin and I married in 1997 and I joined the business full-time in 2000 after a career in communications. 

Not long after our son Saxon was born in 2002, we moved out to Lightning Ridge permanently. Justin was mining and cutting, we were wholesaling, and Jurgen was also in Lightning Ridge full-time. We left Lightning Ridge to pursue other opportunities, then I took our opal business online, first on eBay and then with our own website blackopaldirect.com in 2007. We now wholesale and retail globally, but our passion is to educate people all over the world about Australian opal. We’ve done that through our Youtube videos which so far have 11 million views and typically receive around 500-700,000 views a month on our channels. 

I’m also actively involved in opal and gemstone industry organisations including the International Coloured Gemstone Association (ICA), Australian Opal Association (OA) and the Gemmological Association of Australia (GAA) where I am involved in opal classification. I’ve also represented the Australian opal industry and presented the new opal classification at The World Jewellery Federation CIBJO, among others.

I first heard about the new Australian Opal Centre building from Jenni Brammall after one of the early International Opal Jewellery Design Awards. We were sitting outside the Lightning Ridge airport and having a conversation about dreams for the opal industry. I thought it was the most wonderful idea and that it would be an excellent way to really distill everything around the industry into a singular entity. Glenn Murcutt had always been a hero of mine, and I knew it would be a project of substance when the dream was to have him design the building. And then he actually did, which was very exciting.

I’ve always had a love affair with Lightning Ridge. It’s a town that’s not fixed, it can’t be pigeonholed and it’s an evolving beast full of people who are interesting, amazing characters. There is such diverse experience and knowledge of the world that’s unexpected yet totally appropriate for the town. So I’ve always seen the Australian Opal Centre as being exactly the right and perfect thing for Lightning Ridge. I believe there will be people with the necessary skills to run it who would be attracted to living there or who are already there. They just need the opportunity.

We decided it was the right time to become involved as AOC Founders when I could see the project had a really good chance of being funded and true to its original form. Yes it’s evolved from the original concept, but it isn’t a watered down project. The opportunity to build this beautiful building is still there, the opportunity to provide jobs to the community is still there, and also the sense the community will not just be reliant on singular things. It’s an opportunity to grow and flourish - I really see it as a vehicle of sustainability for the community. I think the whole project has enormous scope.

I’m really excited about the fact that because it’s going to be a world-class facility in a rural community, it’s going to offer the young people of Lightning Ridge, indigenous and non-indigenous, opportunities to view themselves globally; to give them a global point of view and opportunities they wouldn’t normally get in Australia. If you’ve grown up on the opal fields and you like opal, rocks and geology, if you’ve done some stuff at the Australian Opal Centre, your opportunities to get a scholarship or study overseas just goes up exponentially because of the partnerships the Australian Opal Centre has with other institutions. 

Also, our customers and the opal lovers of the world are desperate to have an immersive opal experience, which is very difficult to access at the moment. There’s nowhere to go and study opal, nowhere to have an educational cutting experience that’s easily accessible globally. Unfortunately opal education is done quite poorly across the world - it’s not for want of trying, it’s just been difficult to access the experts and material to do it. So it’s going to be brilliant for domestic and international gemmology students to learn about opal properly and have a place the opal lovers out there can have an amazing immersive experience. Those are the people who are my customers and everybody is just so excited.”

If you’d like to join Justin and Ruth as an AOC Founder, please click here for a Founders Brochure and Application Form. For more information contact Olivia Ward by calling 0400 225 751 or emailing founders@australianopalcentre.com. We look forward to hearing from you!