Common thought and common experience were responsible for that recognition of economic independence as the first value of their new life together. Michael Brady had stood for it from the earliest days of the settlement. He had pointed out that the only things which could give joy in life, men might have on the Ridge, if they were satisfied to find their joy in these things, and not look for it in enjoyment of the superficial luxuries money could provide. Most of the real sources of joy were every man's inheritance, but conditions of work, which wrung him of energy and spirit, deprived him of leisure to enjoy them until he was too weary to do more than sleep or seek the stimulus of alcohol. Besides, these conditions recruited him with the merest subsistence for his pains, very often--did not even guarantee that--and denied him the capacity to appreciate the real sources of joy. But the beauty of the world, the sky, and the stars, spring, summer, the grass, and the birds, were for every man, Michael said. Any and every man could have immortal happiness by hearing a bird sing, by gazing into the blue-dark depths of the sky on a starry night. No man could sell his joy of these things. No man could buy them. Love is for all men: no man can buy or sell love. Pleasure in work, in jolly gatherings with friends, peace at the end of the day, and satisfaction of his natural hungers, a man might have all these things on the Ridge, if he were content with essentials.
Ridge miners' live fearlessly, with the magic of adventure in their daily lives, the prospect of one day finding the great stone which is the grail of every opal-miner's quest. They are satisfied if they get enough opal to make a parcel for a buyer when he puts up for a night or two at Newton's. A young man who sells good stones usually goes off to Sydney to discover what life in other parts of the world is like, and to take a draught of the gay life of cities. A married man gives his wife and children a trip to the seaside or a holiday in town. But all drift back to the Ridge when the taste of city life has begun to cloy, or when all their money is spent. Once an opal miner, always an opal miner, the Ridge folk say.