31/1 Lorne Station Interesting place indeed! The facilities are basic at best and the amenities... Have you ever hopped into your
Lorne Station Caravan...
shower after carefully ensuring that your clothes are not going to get wet, you have your soap in hand, you stand under the running water and it all stops - yep, the water apparently goes off on a regular basis, for some reason ants like the pump that brings the water from the bore 26Km away and manage to stop the flow. We didn't know this! So, back to the van for a shower there, the water is back on.... Back I go and yep you guessed it, off it goes off again! (Not happy Jan!) That's it, we decide to bite the bullet and ask for a refund and go back to town. I think they're used to it, no questions asked and the money was back in our hands before you could cough! We booked into the Lightning Ridge Hotel Motel and Caravan Park - fairly basic but had running water! And, we met Feral, the magpie reared by a local that has a penchant for peoples toes or anything shiny - he's very tame and when you get back to the van from being out he races over to say hello.
Car Door tour this afternoon - they have developed a series of 4 tours around town that are indicated by old car doors nailed to trees along the route, numbered and painted in 1 of 4 colours, Red, Green, Blue or Yellow. It's a fantastic and you can easily
Car Door directions
follow the doors from the designated starting point in town. Green first - It's a drive out to Nettletons First Shaft - sunk in 1902 it opened up the town for mining. There is a lookout of sorts out here that looks out West over the whole valley away from the Ridge. It's so green out there after the recent rains it's really hard to believe that we're officially in the "outback". There are lots of people and tailings mounds out here but not much action going on - not many opals either we're told. Blue next - this is an interesting trip that takes you through many of the areas with living quarters (homes?) along the way. Built from anything at hand there are certainly many amazing sights along the way. Red tour next - which takes you past the Astronomers monument and Amigos Castle (described later) - and other strange structures that have been built by miners in their spare time! Back to the Bowls Club for tea - the biggest bowls club in Western NSW - huge by anyone's standards!
1/2 Black Opal Tours - Picked up early by Larry from Black Opal tours (we're his only customers) for a guided 3 hour tour (I was the skipper!) around the Ridge. We went out Amigos Castle, built by another immigrant (of which there are many here), he has built a castle from the local ironstone - very heavy and hard! He built it to keep himself busy and all by hand! The tower can only be accessed from a tunnel underneath the castle - one of many tunnels... Next the Astronomers Monument, built by a Polish immigrant who had been wrongly jailed for murder in Sydney and on release he headed out to the ridge and made Tequila from cactus and sold it! He also mined made other liquors, grew vegetables and in his spare time built the monument to honour
The Astronomers Monument
astronomers - he felt that they had been victimized over the years like him so he had an affinity with them. Each pillar in the monument has an astronomers name carved into it and he even built a replica of his cell in jail! He died when his still blew up one night! Larry took us out to Lunatics lookout (?) and the remnants of the largest open cut opal mine in the area - it actually shows the levels where opal can be located, if you dig down deep enough! Then, back to the office for a demo in opal cutting and how they make doublets and triplets, accompanied by a devonshire tea - great stuff. Larry took us out to the "Walk-in Mine" where you can literally walk down into a mine - no longer working - but you can see how the whole operates. Thanks to Larry, he made the tour interesting without being the overebearing guide - well done.
2/2 Chamber of the Black Hand! We booked for another night so that we could see the "Chamber". Essentially, it's an old mine that doesn't produce any more and someone has turned it into a tourist attraction by carving images into the walls of the mine. He's been at it for 12 years and still going - different thems make up the display including Hollywood, Egypt, Heroes, Animals and a few others. We were the only one again on this tour so we pretty much had the run of the place. The photo
A new "Coffee...
shows the miner building a "coffee chamber" opening later this year. As part of the "tour" we were taken down to a lower level to see the remains of a 90 year old mine - quite interesting. Our "guide" (Bowls Club Pres.) told us that there's not much opal around now and that mostly the mining is being done out at Glengarry and Sheepyard.
After lunch it was up to the Bottle House - largely built from beer bottles and cans the "house" houses a huge collection of one mans memorabilia! He has bottles, tools, toys, stones, fossils, Avon bottles - hundreds of things in a tiny two room "museum" and each one has a story! After an hour we escaped back to the car and went up the road to Kangaroo Hill - another museum. We should've seen the "signs" as we approached, more of the same. They had to do something for tourism to hold their licence over their claim - so, they dragged every piece of crap they could get their hands on, put it all in a shed and called it a museum - they kept their licence! There was a pile of tailings out the back that we were welcome to fossick through - I'm positive that the fine tooth comb had been dragged through the pile many times but it was a bit of fun and we did find some tiny stones with a bit of colour. Back to the Fossil Museum - very interesting and cleverly presented - lots of opalised fossils and explanations about the formation of opals and how they get valued, well worth a visit!
3/2 Drive to Gunnedah. After a bit of fossicking on the way out of town, we left Lightning Ridge and headed down towards Gunnedah. This took us through Wee Waa, Narrabri and Boggabri - no stopping, but all these towns are looking prosperous and like so many others, they are very proud