Outback Lightning Ridge……Day 80

12 June 2014

Don’t be surprised but we stayed a third day at Gulargambone Caravan Park where we just chilled out. Denise and I went with the caravan park’s owner, Bernie to a craft morning over at the hospital. Another lady, Jill, our resident bush poet, also joined us.

We could go to a craft group anywhere in Australia and it would be similar to our group at home. The group solves the worlds problems and we caught up with the local news – the local cafe owner was held up at knifepoint 3 months ago so put the cafe on the market. 2 days before we arrived in town, an electrical fault caused a fire and so no more cafe. So sad for a tiny town.

We left the boys to their own devices and when we returned at noon John was helping the owner fix a hole in the wall of the ladies toilets and Lance was supervising.

This morning we regretfully left Gulargambone to head north for Lightning Ridge, famed for its Back Opal. as we were leaving the town I saw Nellie, a beautiful dog waiting for her owner to finish his phone call.

We saw a lot of sunflowers on the road’s edge. This one is a photo I took yesterday.

We were interested to see how Lightning Ridge compared to Coober Pedy which we had visited 2 years earlier and also an opal mining town. The road was the worst we have been on. It was uneven and rough and parts of the edge of the bitumen road had collapsed.

We travelled almost 240kms and arrived in Lightning Ridge around 2pm. For sunset we went out to Nettleton’s First Shaft lookout. In Lightning Ridge there are 4 self drive tours you can do. You just follow the coloured car doors.

We were following the Green Car Door tour which was Nettleton's First Shaft Lookout. Charles Waterhouse Nettleton is credited as being the founder of the black opal industry.
He was in his 40s when he sank his first shaft in 1902, backed by a syndicate of businessmen.  While that first effort didn't produce any opal, a second shaft was sunk the following year and he sold his first parcel of opal at that time. This lookout is credited with spectacular sunsets when there is some cloud about. Unfortunately we just got a sunset.

The other interesting thing at this spot was the house made from beer cans.It was built in the 1970s, and was still being occupied by miners as recently as 1996. When these last occupants moved on to prospect a new claim, they simply removed the corrugated roof – a valuable commodity in this intensely resourceful, do-it-yourself town – and took it with them.

And here is a little resourceful effort of the artistic kind.

At this stage we intend to stay 3 nights here but who really knows……………..