Tag Archives: #new south wales

Outback NSW – Lightning Ridge – Part 3

March 8, 2024 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

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’.

central nsw, Holiday

Outback NSW – On the Road

January 11, 2024 Sandra Graham 2 Comments

Today I’m starting a new series of posts about our adventures in the far west of NSW. This post is from our trip in December 2022. It was warm to hot, and the previous month had brought heavy rains to this region. In this post, we were driving up the Castlereagh Highway between Gilgandra and Lightning Ridge. The landscape is very flat, with farm-land on either side.

You can see some of the fields were still flooded, in other places it was functional enough to let the stock back on.

We passed through a few sizeable towns – Gilgandra, Coonamble and Walgett. Some had silo art, while others even had an art gallery.

Holiday

Southern Highlands – Joadja – Part 2

December 18, 2023 Sandra Graham 1 Comment

This is the second and final post of this series on my farm stay at Joadja.

The afternoon of the second day was sunny. You can see the difference in the landscape. Everything looks lush and hopeful.

I woke up early on the last morning in order to take advantage of the gentle early morning light. Being a mid-May morning, there was a little mist and a lot of dew. It’s a magical time to be out-and-about.

The sun eventually cleared the horizon, bringing about another clear morning. I think I appreciated the day a bit more knowing what has come before.

Holiday

By the Seaside – Gerringong

October 26, 2023 Sandra Graham 1 Comment

We’ll break up our adventures in-land with a bit of a seaside sojourn to the near South Coast. Gerringong is now a hop-skip-jump from Sydney since the Princes Highway by-passes were completed. It is usually very popular on weekends and in the summer.

Our visit however was on a particularly changeable weekend in winter 2022. We stayed close to the beach, so although the weather wasn’t the best, the first thing I did in the morning was venture out to Werri Beach, where I was greeted with a rainbow (or two). As you can see, I was obviously one of the more enthusiastic visitors that morning.

It’s worth getting up early for the sight of the lovely, stormy beach.

Holiday, Lord Howe Island

Lord Howe Island – Views of the Mountains

December 31, 2022 Sandra Graham 1 Comment

Lord Howe Island is idyllic, but it doesn’t mean that its weather is too. Remember that it’s a tiny speck in the very big blue Pacific Ocean. Whatever weather the mainland gets, it gets too, albeit it doesn’t last too long, and it’s moderated by the ocean.

I was rather taken with the panorama of Mounts Gower and Lidgbird during my stay, so I made a habit of taking at least one photo of them per day. Turns out that it also creates a very good little chronology of the weather on the island during my stay too, and as you can see, it’s not always idyllic.

Holiday, Lord Howe Island

An introduction to Lord Howe Island

September 13, 2022 Sandra Graham 1 Comment

Yes, yet another visitor to this place. For those who don’t know anything about the island, this speck in the Pacific Ocean is tiny – 10km by 2km. It is 800km north-east of Sydney and consists of 800 permanent residents and (up to) 800 tourists. Flying in is an experience.