Hi from the opal field at White Cliffs

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Hi all
We have enjoyed 3 days here at White Cliffs. The lunar landscape is very like Coober Pedy and most people have underground houses in the 3 hills that surround the town. We have spent 2 afternoons fossicking for opals. We had really good luck the first day, and found quite a bit of colour. We have a small coffee jar full of mostly smaller pieces. It was fun looking.
The four days we spent at Broken Hill were cold and overcast. One day we went out to historic Silverton (where a Town Like Alice and several other films have been made), and on to the Day Dream Silver Mine where we did the underground tour. It was founded and worked before Broken Hill was discovered, and has an original 1884 smelter.
Another day we drove south east to Menindee , and drove around the string of lakes where water is stored and piped to Broken Hill . Sunset Strip had quite a few lakeside baches (including one owned by Mel Gibson), Copi Hollow was another nice lakeside place, and then we drove to our picnic lunch stop on the banks of Lake Pamamaroo, near the Burke and Wills Expedition site. We saw the Main Weir and where the Darling River begins out of the lakes. After driving around the town of Menindee, we continued on to Kinchega National Park nearby, and stopped at the historic woolshed. It had shorn over 6 million sheep, and had had 64 stands, so was huge. It was last used in 1967, when the area became a National Park. We decided to continue on and do a big loop trip so headed west on a 4WD "dry weather" track, rough in parts, for over 70 km to meet up with the Silver City Highway, then headed north the 130km back to Broken Hill. On the drive we saw lots of animals, birds, saw an ecidna on the road and just missed 2 kangaroos at dusk!
Broken Hill has lots of art galleries, and we went to a few of them, including seeing "The Big Picture", the world's largest painting on canvas (100 meters long and over 12 meters high). Sobering was the Miner's Memorial up on the hill, with the names of all the people killed in Broken Hill Mines, how and when they were killed. There were so many.
After Broken Hill we headed east 200km tp Wilcannia, where we had a night beside the Darling River. The old bridge there was interesting, it was the first crossing over the Darling River between Wentworth and Bourke. Built in 1896 it had a vertical lift span to let the paddlesteamers through. Wilcannia was very much an abo town, but the group camped near us were "no problem".
From there , we headed north 100km to White Cliffs, the first commercial opal field in Australia.
Tomorrow we will head back to Wilcannia, then further east, probably to Cobar, or a free park nearby. Some of the roads around this area are closed due to the heavy rain a few months ago, and some of the roads have washouts. We will keep meandering our way back up to Brisbane, seeing some of the parts we have missed.
Regards
Lynne and Chris

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