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Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Lightning Ridge – Part 3

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Opal mining is a hard life, as can be seen in the TV series, Outback Opal Hunters. Miners are generally a secretive lot, but travelling with a geologist (a.k.a. Hubby) has its perks as he has connections. We ended up going on a bit of a sightseeing tour in and around Lightning Ridge with one of his connections, S. He first showed us around the famous digs of Lightning Ridge (featured in my previous post). Here are some other places he showed us.

I showed you some smaller claims previously, but we were shown bigger workings as well. This claim is no longer being worked.

To see if you have any good opals, you have to sort your diggings (with the help of a cement mixer/tumbler, and then give it a good wash to get the dust off. Then you look at the rocks in the dark under UV light to see if anything glows – opals glow under UV light! Told you it wasn’t easy. Luckily, Lightning Ridge has a community wash plant, and we got to see it at work.

Miners bring their dogs out for company (and perhaps protection). If it was my dog, she’d be out chasing the wildlife and you’d never see her again.

There are other smaller localities close to Lightning Ridge that are also opal fields. We drove to the locality of Grawin, where we found that one of the local watering holes (there were several) was uniquely Australian. And their War Memorial was ‘down-to-earth’.

Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Lightning Ridge – Part 2

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Lightning Ridge is a mining town. It is remote. It has a harsh climate. It is in ‘woop woop’ by the standards of most East Coasters. What does the land look like? A bit like this.

The mining that occurs around the town is usually done by individuals or small groups as opals can’t successfully be mined on an industrial scale. Hence there are no really enormous holes in the ground, just thousands of little ones.

Mining is usually people’s winter ‘job’, as the high summer temperatures mean that it’s too difficult to stay year-round. In summer, they run back to the coast!

Many miners live on or near their mine ‘lease’, and council regulations appear non-existent, so they are free to build what they like. Some are so imaginative that they’re now tourist attractions.

Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Walgett and Lightning Ridge – Part 1

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We’ll continue on our December 2022 road trip and drive further north. The next town we passed through was Walgett. It didn’t have any real architectural marvels, but it was a busy, sizeable town. And it had a bit of art with a painted silo and a little art gallery.

Beyond Walgett, we drove on a very straight and flat road, and saw evidence of the Q4 2022 floods in the surrounding coutry-side.

We arrived at Lightning Ridge late in the afternoon, in time to view the sunset. Lightning Ridge is an opal mining town and proper outback country, and we’ll explore it in the following post or two.