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Published: March 10th 2015
Fred Bodel's Shack
Fred lived and worked here until his death in his 90s. In his 80's he rode his pushbike 700ks from Lightning Ridge to stay in a cooler climate for the summer, and back in autumn. Australia, like many other countries has had many stampedes for wealth, particularly on the gold fields.
Lightning Ridge probably has never had the equivalent, but over the past 120 years Black Opal has lured many a miner to burrow 40 to 90 feet underground looking for their fortune. Some have certainly made a fortune, but 90%!h(MISSING)ave had fun but lucked out.
The majority of the mining today is done using a boring machine first to test the sub-strata looking for tell tale signs of water having come up from artesian sources or run down through cracks and faults providing the required moisture to create the silica nodules or reefs of silica that will form opal. As we discovered, they can find the black nodules, but only a small percentage of the nodules in fact have colour. Our brief fossicking found plenty of black opal and grey opal with no colour. The most colourful rocks we found were known as brain granite.
By comparison, until more recent times, a shaft was dug down using pick, shovel and bucket within the claim down to the kaolin layer where the opal is found. Then they
would examine the structures, look for nodules, and after a lot of hard work, and a lot of luck, find a valuable stone or two.
The reality is more likely that they will burrow channels not much bigger than the miners body, following any likely seam. Of course much of the coloured opal found is small pieces, not all with the black opal backing, and only rarely full of red and gold tones. The value of the stone is dependant on weight (carats), clarity and colour, plus the black backing.
The story is told of an old time miner who started digging a horizontal shaft on his claim and found colour. Into the pocket. The kept digging and found more. Not wanting to stop, he kept digging, pushing the dust and rubble out behind him in the horizontal shaft. He found more colour, kept digging and pushing the rubble out behind him. More colour, more digging, more rubble. Once the run with colour stopped he found that he couldn't reverse out of the shaft. It took him more than 5 hours of shuffling waste back into the head of the shaft and out into the original vertical shaft.
Lucky he didn't suffocate. It reminds me of a Biblical Parable - 'What will it profit a man if he gets loads of coloured opals and loose his soul?'
One of my photos shows a colourful stone mounted on a gold ring. The stone alone here is worth Aud$54,000.00. It was by special arrangement that I was allowed to photograph this superb stone.
There are a number of self drive tours through the opal fields, or alternatively, there are a couple of tour operators that take you through a variety of sites including history and stories of the people. Bad luck for the tour operator we chose, of the 6 people booked, we were the only ones to show up! So, our guide, himself an opal miner for the past 36 years, knew a lot about both the people and mining. Not only that, he would stop for photo shots that we wanted rather than what was on the itinerary. The tour included a visit to The Chambers of the Black Hand.
This second part of the tour is underground in what was in days gone by a very productive mine. Now it is a combination of
a mining shop, art gallery and an opal education centre. The mine tour was led by a prospector/geologist. His insights into finding opal were most interesting and you can quickly see why not every likely claim site is going to put money in the pocket. One of the issues these days is the mining method has become quite mechanised. A days mining will consume around 400 litres of diesel fuel. They can mine many times faster than the pick and shovel methods, but it does come at a cost. The miners use either pneumatic or hydraulic drills to open up the mine. The resultant rock and dust is sucked up the mine shaft and loaded into a shoot and then a truck. The rock is then sieved and washed using old concrete mixer that has been retired and found a new life in retirement. These two mechanisms are hungry for fuel, but really make for efficient mining, but seem to keep the miners poor unless they have a big strike. There is no great excitement on the fields at the moment. Many of the miners leave the district over the heat of summer, but secondarily, no one has hit a
The Opal Dream
I wish!!! Shame it is only a model truck. rich find in a while. As soon as they do, there will be a flurry of activity.
For those of you who don't mind walking down 84 steps, and go 12 or 15 meters underground through the narrow and low shafts dug out years ago, there is a real treat waiting. One of the miners has turned his hand to sculpture, and the variety is a seemingly endless gallery of an amazing range of subjects. Like dragons and dinosaurs, birds and animals, politicians, actors? You will find all of these. How about visit ancient Egypt and visit a Pharaoh's Tomb. You are catered for. Dame Edna is featured and wearing spectacular glasses as would be expected. The variety is endless so I have let the camera show you a variety of the art.
What a morning we had.
This all makes the beautiful (and free) artesian pool seem tame. Not to mention all the historical mining huts found dotted around town.
There is a great mystery how Lightning Ridge got its name. it was in fact first called Newtown because there were a number of old towns not properly registered on the plains. It is probable
Mum and Joey
Opal Caravan Park, Lightning Ridge that the name has been derived from the Aboriginal name for the area, Wallangulla , which means Lightning Bolt. It is also thought by many that lightning has plaid a major role in the formation of opal. According to some you need four things to create opal; silica, waters, a cavity and finally electricity. You judge if lightning may have provided the fourth and most important ingredient.
The third special place we visited was the John Murray Art Gallery. Do not expect to find anything traditional in this gallery. John first became famous for his portrayal of our lovely emus. His paintings are ultra simplistic, but some features deliberately exaggerated such as the hair like feathers on an emu's face.
This some what humerous approach permeates all his art - a good health dose of larrikin humour. Anyone other than stuffy nosed art critics will come out with a print, great memories and a big smile. The day we visited, the lady in charge of the shop turned out to be the driver of our tour, Larry's daughter. One must be careful in small towns! But after a request, she agreed to let me take a photo of
one wall of the gallery to be used on Travelblog. That picture (photo stitch) is in the panoramas at the top of this blog. The artist's style is well represented in the central 3 panel painting. The background, sky and landscape are very simple. The old railway sleepers scattered and their rough surface exaggerated, and the enduring camels looking back on the short term values of man and machine. Only two things stopped me buying this painting - 1. I don't have a wall big enough to display the painting, 2. My credit card wasn't big enough to purchase this original work of art.
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Ake Och Emma
Ake Dahllof and Emma Holmbro
I love modern ruins
Abandoned vehicles that is rusting away is a kind of modern ruin. We have an entire blog entry with abandoned cars wrecks and several other with other modern ruins. I love those places and I never get tired of visiting them or seing photos from them./Ake