Andamooka is situated 610km north of Adelaide in South Australia. It lies to the west of lake Torrens, a large salt lake. Andamooka was first sighted in 1858 by the explorer John Stuart, and he named it after a native designation meaning "large waterhole".
Between 1839 and 1862 a large number of explorers and surveyors visited the far north of the state, and their favourable reports led to an expansion of pastoral activity in the region. In 1872 a pastoral lease was taken out for Andamooka station, and 58 years later, in 1930, two boundary riders found coloured stones in an area close to what is now known as Opal Creek. These stones were later identified by the station manager as opal.
Opal was dug for some months and sold in Coober Pedy before the discovery became generally known. One story is that one of the first two gougers was drunk in Pt Augusta with £8000 in his pocket, and let slip where the opal had come from. More miners arrived in 1933, and there were thirty working the fields in 1946.
Production and population grew up to the nineteen sixties, with perhaps one thousand people living on the fields. A decline began in the early seventies, but at its peak Andamooka was one of the world's major opal fields.