Orange car doors and outback pub crawls

Wednesday morning dawned bright and sunny - a perfect day for a birthday (happy birthday dad) and a quick run up the highway to Lightning Ridge.

Like a few other towns we've been through lately, Lightning Ridge has been known by several previous names:

Initially the settlement was known as Nettleton's Hill because Charles Nettleton discovered the opals in the district in 1902. It was later renamed by the New South Wales Lands Department as Warrangulla but after World War I it was named Lightning Ridge. It is claimed that the name dates back to the 1870s when a farmer, his dog and 600 sheep were all killed by lightning [on the ridge].

The ridge is predominately sandstone with lower ironstone and claystone layers - and within the fault lines that can exist between layers is where the silica-rich water seeped from the original inland seas, and the black opal was formed over millions of years. It is the ironstone which apparently attracts the lightning - and according to old-timers, where the lightning strikes, you will find opal. There are other ways of narrowing down where to stake your claim - stands of large trees (with their roots heading toward the fault lines and water) and the presence of native orange bushes. Nowadays, there are big auger drills which can take a sample of the rock down the 5-30 metres below ground level to the opal layer, to find any traces of opal.

We checked into our caravan park (the Opal Holiday Park) a little after 11, then walked into town to visit the Opal Festival, 150+ stalls of information, rough cut stones, polished stones, gems, jewellery and rock-hobby supplies.

On the way home, we dropped into the John Murray art gallery (remember the emu murals from Parkes and Walgett?) - this gallery is well worth visiting and has way more to offer than only quirky emus.

Lightning Ridge has several self-guided explorer tours, marked with 5 differently coloured car doors. So, the Red, the Yellow, the Green, the Blue and the Orange Car Door Tours. You pick up the route map with full explanations and opening times of all the attractions on each of the tours at the Lightning Ridge Visitor Information Centre in exchange for a gold coin. Then you head off on whichever tour takes your fancy and simply follow the directions and the coloured car doors marked with arrows and numbers around town (yes, they are real, old car doors).

So on Thursday, with another lovely sunny day, we hopped on Katie and went out to the active Grawin Opal Fields via the Orange Car Door Tour.

A warning on the map - TURN OFF GPS AND GOOGLE MAPS - we did have the latter turned on to get to the start of the tour, but even before the start it was trying to send us in the wrong direction, so please heed the valid warning!
The other warning on both the map and evidenced on lots of signs is that it is an active mine area, with dangerous shafts scattering the landscape, and big, old mining equipment driving around. We were also warned that many of the trucks don't have working brakes any more, so always give way to trucks, both on the mine sites as well as in town!

On the way out of town (or into town, whichever way you're heading), there was another touch from John Murray; a sculpture this time - of Stanley the Emu made from old bits of VW beetle parts - welcoming you to the area. The story behind the statue and its construction seems to sum up the character of this place.

First stop was the Grawin Golf Club: The Club in the Scrub:

Then onto Marg's Carvings which is a little opal shop well worth popping into in Grawin. Unfortunately, as we were on the bike and a bit hard to pull over to the side of the dirt road in an active mining area, I didn't take any photos of the country itself - but it was sparse bushes and shrubs, with lots of white stony mullock/tailings heaps. The photo on this page is typical of the area.

Next pub was the Glengarry Hilton:

Then just around the corner was the Sheepyard Inn, located on the original sheep paddocks before opal was discovered, hence its name. The Mundaroo station is still an active station in the area; we saw sheep, and I'm pretty sure it was that station.

We were amazed by the amount of abandoned equipment - these examples were worth big dollars, but it must just get to a point when it is no longer economical to fix them, and they remain on site to be picked at by their owners, to repair other ailing machines.

On the way back from the Grawin Opal Fields we stopped for some reflection at the Lake Beard community memorial to the fallen; both those on the war battlefields, commemorating fallen soldiers, as well as those on the opal mine fields, reminding us that it is such a dangerous occupation, with many solo miners using old and unreliable equipment, made more complex by being so far away from good medical help. Give them full credit though; they do it really tough, even these days.

Once back in town, we walked through the festival stalls again.