Lightning Ridge

We got up early this morning and packed our stuff up, put it in the car and moved the car to the main car park so we could go on a 3 hour tour after booking out. We did the Black Opal tour which covered the Walk-in mine, a look at the mining claims and camps, the odd houses including bottle houses and castles, the Black Queen bottle house, the house of Fred Bodel one of the original miners, saw videos about opal mining in Lightning Ridge, fossick for opals and see them being cut and polished. Oh, and Devonshire tea! It was very interesting to see how the miners live/lived. Some people still live there with generators for power and rocks and dust for front and backyards. We even saw kids play equipment in one yard so there are children living in those conditions too. People live in caravans, shanty type houses, old train carriages, whatever they can manage, to live on their claim and mine it. There are Holden car door signs all around instead of street signs. You can see Fin standing near one above. There is a central school with about 450 students from Prep to year 12. It is a nice building and grounds and they have a lovely new hospital and nursing home too. Of course, if someone is really ill they can be flown to Dubbo via the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Apparently the government provide a lot of funding for remote communities such as these. There is one supermarket in town and a ladies fashion shop but most stuff is aimed at tourism; opal shops and galleries.
The artesian baths are amazing. Basically it is a swimming pool with water pumped up straight from the artesian bore underground so it is very warm. There were people in there this morning when it was about 10 degrees or maybe less. The steam arising from the pool is incredible.
At $25 each, the tour was well worth doing since we were taken to the most interesting/relevant places and told lots of things it would have been hard to learn ourselves. Of course, they take you to their opal showroom and offer you jewellery at ‘discount prices’ which we had no idea whether they were discount or not but that is what happens when you are a tourist. You don’t have to buy anything; in fact we didn’t but not because it was expensive or not nice but just because most was set in yellow gold which I don’t wear very often and it was hard to get a look in among the grey nomads that were swarming around the counter so I just gave up trying. There were some pretty stones though. I even found a little chip of bluish green opal while fossicking! Not enough to use for jewellery but a keepsake anyway
Our tour guide was locally born in Collarenabri and she loves Lightning Ridge. She even has a claim of her own but a miner works it for 70% of the profits. She has made about $15,000 or so I believe.
After the tour we headed off to Armidale via Collarenabri, Moree, Graves End and Glen Innes. The country was flat and lifeless for a long time and it was again, the road less travelled. However as we got closer to Moree, things livened up. There were actually a few trucks and cars coming the other way and the road surface was better with no pot holes. We got to Armidale by about 6.45pm and I was thrilled when the Vodafone connection was available as the mobile phone coverage along the way had been scant. In fact, Optus was still dodgy in our room but this connection has been fine. Thus, the BLOG update! More piccies when we have broadband again. Meanwhile check out my Webshots album. My username is buglady02 for those that don’t already know and I have put a lot of photos from the trip there already.Enjoy!