About us

Hans emigrated to Australia from Denmark in 1990 and traveled around as a backpacker for 18 months, where he tried many different things. One of the towns he visited was Lightning Ridge, a small town in the Australian outback, world famous for opals. He fell in love with the relaxed lifestyle, where there were wide streets and high ceilings. You could go out to the mines in the morning and try to find the rare opals. After a hard and sweaty day at work, you could just swing by the local pub to find out if some of the other miners had had more luck finding opals.

Just before Hans left for Lightning Ridge, he met three girls from Denmark who had just come to Sydney, Australia for a 3-month vacation. He helped them buy a car and they parted ways, but he kept in touch with one girl, Helle.

After the three months, the girls were back in Sydney and Hans needed a new car. He hopped on a bus and train and traveled 12 hours to meet them in Sydney and buy their car. Since she had no other plans, he invited Helle to spend her last week in Australia to come up and experience Lightning Ridge with him. She said yes and quickly fell in love with the city and the lifestyle too.

She never got to use the return ticket and they got married 8 months later.

Hans first worked for another opal miner where the pay was a percentage of the opals he found and Helle got a job at the local burger shop. After 6 months in the opal mine without finding any opals and thus no pay, Hans had to take a job as an electrician.

To live as cheaply as possible, they decided to buy an old shack and convert it into housing on a mine site outside Lightning Ridge. Power came from solar panels, sewage was an old mine shaft, and water came from rainwater collected in large water tanks.

A year later, some of their Swedish friends, Bjørn and Anna, needed new partners in their mine and Helle and Hans decided to take the chance as opal miners again. Over the next 18 months they found many opals and saw how good it can be to dig opals. Bjørn and Hans were busy in the mine, and Anna and Helle had few opals to sell. Gradually, opal finds began to decrease and Bjørn and Anna moved back to Sweden and the partnership was dissolved.

After experiencing how easy, but also how difficult, opals can be, Hans and Helle decided to invest some of the money from the opals in an electrical business. Two years later, in 1998, their son, Christian, was born.

In 2004, Hans and Helle bought their own mine, which they still operate today. At first it was as a hobby with a jackhammer and wheelbarrow, but gradually it became more serious and they invested in better equipment.

Helle started designing opal jewelry and soon after they established Jensen Opals with a focus on selling opals and opal jewelry wholesale in Denmark at jewelry fairs.

When it became possible to take courses in opal cutting, both Helle and Hans took the basic course, and Helle, as one of the few people in the world, has also taken an extended course in opal cutting and opal carving.

In 2012, the family moved to Brisbane so Christian could get a better education. They kept the opal mine and began selling their opals and opal jewelry full-time at tourist markets.

In 2016, Helle and Hans moved to Denmark while their son stayed in Brisbane to study. They opened their shop, Jensen Opals, in Ebeltoft in 2017, selling exclusively their own products. A year later, they bought an existing goldsmith shop further up the pedestrian street in Ebeltoft, where they now operate a goldsmith shop with Scandinavia's largest selection of Australian opals and opal jewelry.

Once a year Hans travels back to their mine in Lightning Ridge and digs opals with Christian, who still lives in Brisbane. They live in a caravan at the mine for the 4-6 weeks they dig.