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Published: June 25th 2010
Hi all
Tonight is our 3rd night at Lightening Ridge. Our fossicking here has been fun, but not very successful, so far. The opal here is brighter in colour than White Cliffs, which was mainly a milky white colour. Here it is mainly mined. The last 2 nights we have stayed at Lorne Station, about 6 kms out of town, and last night enjoyed happy hour around a big bonefire.
From White Cliffs we drove back down to Wilcannia, then east. Our next night was at a free park, we had a fire and I cooked dinner in our camp oven.
Our next night was spent at Cobar, another mining town with gold and copper mines. From there we headed north to Bourke on the banks of the Darling River, and stayed 3 nights at the very nice Kidman's Camp at North Bourke. The Back o' Bourke Tour with Stuart from the infomation centre was excellent. We toured the main sites in town, then headed out to the very sad citrus industry that has really been badly affected by the government cut in irrigation water rates with no compensation. We saw huge packing sheds, now finished the last crops picked. We
were all given a plastic bag to help ourselves to some oranges (really nice), watermelon were there to be picked (Chris got one), and the table grapes and limes were still on the vines / trees not picked! Some around here are going broke!
Next we visited the cotton gin, and saw the big cotton stacks waiting to be processed. In the plant, we saw the cotton go from the raw to sorted, cleaned and bagged within 2 minutes. There is a lot of cotton grown around here. We also then went on to a jojoba plantation, and got some oil and hand cream from there.
We visited Fred Hollows' , the eye surgeon's grave, he had worked at Bourke, mainly with aboriginal blind people when he first started, and wanted to be buried there.
I spent a morning with Jenny Greentree at a "Tourist Art Class", learning her technique with pastels. It was excellent, I had her to myself as no others booked in for that day, and I produced a picture I'm proud of!
The towns we passed going east of Bourke had not much happening! We saw lots of emu, and plenty of grass. So , we
Chris' friend
this bird was so tame, it whistled beautifullycontinued on to Lightening Ridge, but found it almost booked out. We could only get 1 night in the caravan park (1 of 3 in town), the others were full too, so had to move out to Lorne Station, a more rustic camping ground.
Depending on the weather tomorrow, we may do a day trip about 50kms out to a public fossicking area in another working opal area, or move on. We will decide in the morning! It's warmer here, not using our possum blanket on the bed now!
Cheers
Lynne and Chris
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Susi
non-member comment
Hi
Lynne, Well done on your painting. It is just great - another hidden talent. Cheers, Susi