Page "Fossicking" Paragraph 6

::" Noodling: The practice of sifting through rejected mullock heaps for small pieces of precious opal inadvertently discarded by the miners.

A number of people on the opal fields rely entirely on noodling for a living.

They either sift through the waste material by hand ... or use a noodling machine.

These people are ' professional ' noodlers.

Tourists and others casually searching the dumps for pieces of opal are also noodling.