2004/02 New South Wales loop - Lightning Ridge |
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We were finally getting close to the Lightning Ridge opal fields out west, and we headed back to Glen Innes on the Gwydir Highway. As we went west from there, the scenery became progressively flatter and drier, and the road steadily became narrower. At Collarenebri we 
took off on an outback road, a shortcut to Lightning Ridge. This area is classic “bush”, dry red earth, low straggly trees, and spinifex (spiky grass). There were herds of sheep in amongst the trees, and the occasional reptile crossing the road. The roads are nominally “gravel” but they are mostly sand with rocks.
The town of Lightning Ridge looked a little run-down, much less prosperous than Coober Pedy, the other opal mining town we visited on our last trip. I guess that’s partly because most of the mining is now outside the town, and partly because the town isn’t on the way to anywhere, so it doesn’t see much tourist traffic.
We checked into the Crocodile Caravan Park in the middle of town, and I think we were the only tourists. Everyone else lived there full time. The only reason for the campground’s name seemed to be so that they could call the bathroom the “Crocodile Dunny”.
Saturday February 28th
I took an early morning run along the highway out of town and along the “Green Door” trail. Their way of signposting is to take old car doors, paint them in a colour code, and hang them on a tree.
The highway was lined with small tombstones and little shrubs, and some of them bore inscriptions like “In memory of …” but others were ads for bars and pizza places. I found out later that they were markers saying that somebody was sponsoring the shrub and paying for its water supply.
The Green Door trail was alive with birds and kangaroos. The roos must not see runners very often as they stopped munching to watch me go past.
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Lightning Ridge (14.41) |
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We wanted to find a place where we could look for opals, and we drove out to the fields at 
Gravin and Glengarry, but most of the mines had “no noodling” or “no specking” signs. In Australia they refer to all kinds of prospecting as “fossicking”, but “noodling” or “specking” is a particular form of fossicking, the sorting through of mines’ tailings. As most opal mines are thirty feet down, we amateurs have to be content with searching through whatever the mine operators don’t want.
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