Lightning Ridge

Roma – Lightning Ridge:  19 July [432 Km]

We were on the Great Inland Way reasonably early and passed through Surat on our way to St George.  St George is on the Ballonne River and looks a very prosperous community;  we enjoyed morning tea in a beaut little café.  As we continued south, we saw increasing numbers of emus:  at last we had found where all the emus were!  There were emus everywhere as we drove to Hebel on the border with NSW. 

Now here is a real gem of a discovery:  the Hebel Store, which is a general store, restaurant and caravan park all rolled in together.  There’s not much at Hebel, apart from the Hebel Hotel and the Hebel Store but Barb and Ralph at the Hebel Store provide refreshments of the highest quality.  Our lunch was simply delicious:  home cooked with lots of fresh salad and Barb and Ralph are delightful hosts.  If you are travelling along the Great Inland Way and need a break, a stop at the Hebel Store.  You will be well rewarded!

We then drove the remaining few kilometres to Lightning Ridge and called in to the Visitor Centre.  Having learnt about “Stanley”, we immediately drove back to the highway and a few kilometres south – where we found Stanley.  Stanley is a Big Emu:  in fact, he is 18 metres tall and he towers over the Castlereagh Highway.  He has been constructed from scrap metal, Volkswagen car bodies and satellite dishes and he makes quite an impression beside the highway!

Later in the afternoon, we walked to the artesian bore baths in Lightning Ridge.  There are two pools at these baths and the water temperature is a constant 39 degrees;  we joined a number of other people who were relaxing in the very warm water. 

What a lovely way to end our day on the road.  After dinner at the bowling club, we had an early night.

Lightning Ridge:  20 August

What has happened?  We woke to a bright and sunny day – but the wind was from the south and it was quite bitter.  For the first time in many weeks, we both wore jumpers!  This is all a bit of a shock after weeks of beautiful sunny and warm weather.

Still, the birds were well and truly up and singing.  We were delighted to have a tree full of Yellow ringed parrots right outside our cabin.

Anyway, we set off to check out a bit more of Lightning Ridge.  Our first activity was to visit the Chambers of the Black Hand.  This is a fascinating combination of an extensive opal mine, an extra-ordinary range of sandstone carvings in underground passages and an underground opal shop.  We had to put on hard hats and climb down more than 100 steps along a narrow passage into the mine workings.  

 

 

We spent quite a while walking around the many carvings of famous people, jungle animals, the Last Supper, a Buddha, dinosaurs, super heroes, Egyptian chambers and even Michelangelo’s David. 

The bloke who has done all the carvings is still adding to the collection:  he was carving Jim Carey this morning!  A former opal miner then took us further underground to look at the approach to opal mining in the Lightning Ridge opal field.  It was most interesting to see the changes that have taken place even with opal mining over the past 100 years or so.

Later in the afternoon, we visited the Rector of Lightning Ridge Anglican Church, David Piper, his wife, Joanne and their two sons, Daniel and Luke.  It was great to spend a bit of time with them and exchange stories about our experiences.  We also wanted to encourage them in their ministry here, as it is reasonably remote – although they are enjoying their time here.  As is the case with other similar locations, the Lightning Ridge church gets a number of visitors from grey nomads at this time of year.

We had a beaut dinner at Bruno’s Italian restaurant and then prepared our gear for our run through to Armidale tomorrow.

Oh!  We also prepared for the temperature to drop to minus 1 tonight!  How will we cope?