You know you’re in the bush when…
In Lightning Ridge we take orders for fish & chips only to find out that they’re out of fish! No Saturday papers until noon, “the truck’s only just left Walgett.” Continue reading You know you’re in the bush when…
Tag: Lightning Ridge
Should’ve Gone to Specsavers
We’re soaking in the artesian bore at Lightning Ridge when I notice a man waving. Is he waving at me or my friend Vee? Neither of us can see all that well, especially when the glasses are in the beach bag but we can see that he has a flowing bushman’s beard at least a foot long. He swims slowly across the pool then stops next to the bloke beside us. We both breathe a sigh of relief. “G’day” he says “when ya want to know the news (around here) ya come to the bores.” Continue reading Should’ve Gone to Specsavers
Chambers of the Black Hand
In Lightning Ridge, NSW the Chambers of the Black Hand tour is as unique a tour as its name implies. It is in what they call a ‘walk in’ opal mine and we descend 80 or so steps to 40 … Continue reading Chambers of the Black Hand
Grawin Opal Fields, Lightning Ridge
Two out of three ain’t bad. There’s another opal field about 60kms from The Ridge and it is home to 3 iconic pubs. We set off in a convoy of 3 cars down a good bitumen road to the tiny town of Cumborah. A little further on we turn onto an appalling dirt road that our mate Vee rates as worse than the Birdsville Track. Outback Jack is in the back seat thanking God that Vee has offered to take us in her car! We bump along swearing and cursing the road and the dust and reading car door signs … Continue reading Grawin Opal Fields, Lightning Ridge
Car Doors and Castles
Two streets down from the Opal Caravan Park is one of the famous Lightning Ridge Car Door Tours, the Red one. Thus we leave the bitumen to follow numbered red car doors to explore this town’s minefields and minefield is an appropriate description. Because people live on mining leases in Lightning Ridge their houses are as basic as possible. By order of law the land should only be used for mining not housing. The hillsides are littered with ramshackle dwellings, decaying caravans, tram cars, corrugated iron shanties and mullock heaps with rusting bucket structures atop that look like roller coasters, which … Continue reading Car Doors and Castles
Lightning Ridge
Lightning Ridge is unique. Seven hundred kilometres from Sydney it feels like the outback but in Australian terms of distance it isn’t, really. An ironstone ridge rising from a floodplain it attracts lightning and thus the name.The Ridge is an opal mining town where people live above ground usually beside their mines. Unlike the opal towns of Coober Pedy and White Cliffs where they prefer to live underground because of the hot climate and the dry air in their mines. To the tourist it is a town of characters and eccentrics and never knowing whether the scruffy bearded guy in … Continue reading Lightning Ridge
Alight in Lightning Ridge
There’s a shop in town called Mr Cheap and he advertises that he sells everything that a caravanner needs so we put him to the test. Just when we thought that we couldn’t find anything we realised that we needed solar lights for our guy rope pegs. Now where have I seen those lights recently? That’s right, the Bourke cemetery. Mr Cheap sells artificial flowers too. Continue reading Alight in Lightning Ridge
A New Angle on Racing
Did you know that Lightning Ridge has the only straight racecourse in Australia? Well it is just a little bent but certainly not the usual oval shape. That gives a whole new slant on things for the poor old race callers. As soon as they leave the starting stalls the call could well be ” as they enter the straight….” Continue reading A New Angle on Racing
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