Andamooka: Lisa visits this town in the Outback of South Australia

Wander around Andamooka and you soon realise this is no ordinary town. It thrives on the search for what Andamookans call "colour" - that little sparkle that brings a smile to the face of any opal miner.

Many have come to this part of far northern South Australia since opal was first discovered in 1927. Back then it really was a one-horse town where a bloke could virtually disappear off the face of the earth if he wanted to.

Dick Clark first came here about twenty years after the first find. As a decommissioned soldier, he reckoned he'd seen enough madness for one lifetime.

"I came here in early 1946, just after the war. I was sort of footloose - I'd never heard of the place," he said.

Dick showed us around the house that he built all those years ago. It's clear that he used whatever he could find - a few boulders here, scraps of tin there, plenty of native pine and slate slabs from a nearby river bed.

"There's no building code here, no council. Nothing," said Dick. "We haven't even got names for our streets."

It's now been listed on the national heritage register as a classic piece of outback history. And that's a description that sits equally well with this quietly spoken digger who fought in the middle east in World War Two and was on his was back to Australia when he was captured by the Japanese. Dick Clark spent three and a half years in a POW camp building a railway across part of Sumatra.

"It probably wasn't as bad as the Burma Railway. We didn't have any cholera but otherwise the conditions were the same." He said

And it was here in the rough and tumble town of Andamooka in this home-made home that Dick could finally find what he describes as some "peace and quiet."

There are quite a few places like Dick's scattered throughout the town. Join a tour at the Bottlehouse Motel which also doubles as the Post Office and you can explore some of the Andamooka's earliest monuments to DIY house building.

Today some tourists try their luck noodling for opal by picking over the diggings left by others. But if that doesn't suit your fancy and you still want to see what all the fuss is about there are plenty of display rooms where you can watch cutters like Peter Taubers do their thing. Watch for long enough and you might get the disease - the desire to uncover just a bit more "colour". The symptoms can be long lasting after all, Dick Clark got the bug almost sixty years ago.

"Just enough to stop me and not enough to make a fortune and get away." said Dick.

Andamooka is about six hundred kilometres from Adelaide. Margo Duke at the Bottlehouse Motel runs tours of the old cottages, which are in the town's main street. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au

Andamooka Heritage Tours
The Andamooka Bottlehouse Motel
275 Opal Creek Boulevard