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Published: June 23rd 2014
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Lorne Station, Lightning Ridge
We watched this pair of Blue Bonnets forage for food, staying hidden in the shade to make it hard for predators to see them. I was up in time to see the sunrise this morning and try to photograph it. Didn’t quite work as I couldn’t remember how to get into the setting for sunrises and the new camera washed out the colour. Back inside to reread the manual, so I’ll be able to do it tomorrow. On the way back the area became a riot of sound as the birds all came to life. One group of Noisy Miners decided that the best insects were around the doors and windows of the toilet block. They were hanging every which way and chattering away as they did it. Nearby, sitting on one of the wires of a power pole was a small very colourful parrot. I managed to sneak up close enough to get a good photo. He was a Mallee Ringneck, mostly green with red over his nose, some yellow on his breast and some blue on the wings. Very pretty! I was also serenaded by some Australian Magpies warbling away in the trees. They do make a nice start to a day.
After breakfast, I did three loads of washing while Barry vacuumed the floors and booked us in for the Outback
The Green Car Door Tour, Lightning Ridge
The features of the tour were all marked by a car door hung on a tree and painted with the tour colour (green in this case) and a number to match the information sheet available. Opal Tour tomorrow. I managed to flood the laundry - when I went to get the laundry basket from the van the hose taking the water from the machine decided that was the time to leap out of the laundry trough and, being very wide, pour gallons of soapy water all over the floor. I had to sweep it out of the doors with a besom that was standing nearby. At least the floor got a bit of a wash! It was a sunny but cool and windy morning so most of the clothes dried OK. While I was waiting for the wash to finish (and singing some opera) Barry came over and saw a Blue Bonnet land in the shadow of a tree nearby and begin foraging. He was difficult to see as his colours blended with the shadows really well and he never left them – obviously a very good safety strategy against predators!
Once I had the sheets on the line, we had a quick lunch and set off to do one of the four Car Door Tours. These are self-drive tours around the area using an information sheet (bought for $1 from the Tourist Information
Opal Fields Lightning Ridge NSW
This is a Hoist, used to bring the loose clay and opal up to the surface from the mine. The big drum tips the contents into a waiting truck (or directly onto the heap and the miner digs it into) It will be "Rumbled" next. Centre) and marked by different coloured and numbered car doors hanging on trees, red, yellow, blue and green. We knew we’d be doing yellow and red on the tour tomorrow so we thought we’d start with the Green Tour and then try the Blue.
The Green Car Door Tour was rated as dry weather only and was on rough dirt road, with large puddles still there from the rain about 4 days ago, which were not showing any signs of soaking in. The car doors were quite easy to spot but most of the points of interest were trees, a power line, two small hills, a gravel pit and an open cut which was just about filled in. Much more interesting was that we were driving through an opal field with tracks, shafts, mullock heaps and mining equipment everywhere and caravans or shacks right next to them that the owners lived in. The last door, No 13 was the best, being the top of the small hill and looking west out across the remains of a large multi-million dollar opal field, Coocoran, that had operated from 1988 to 1996. There was also the first opal shaft dug in 1902
Lightning Ridge Opal Fields
This is the Agitator that knocks or washes the clay off the rocks to reveal any stones that must then be examined and sorted for "colour", which makes the gem valuable. by Edward Nettleton who had originally discovered the black opal at Lightning Ridge.
On an open area at the top, some wag had laid out some of the white rocks that are dug up from the shafts to form a maze which led to a rock pile at the centre. It wasn’t much of a challenge as you could see the path. I did it anyway, being a big kid, but I cheated and stepped across the “walls” to come out.
Living at the top of the hill was Richard Athens, who had originally arrived in the Ridge by horse drawn Gypsy Caravan about five years ago. He liked it and settled on a claim. There was a very large, heavy piece of a tree lying on the ground that he decided to decorate and so he produced the “Opal Tree”, which has small, less than gem quality pieces of opal, glued and varnished, from top to bottom. There’s even a face with long blue hair in the middle, to represent the tree spirit, and a frog. It looks very pretty when the sun shines on it. He is now working on another, smaller, log which he has
The Opal Tree, Lightning Ridge, NSW
Richard Athens and some of his friends have covered this very old tree stump with opals, some to make a picture like the face on the front or the frog. They gleam in the sunlight. given opal teeth so it looks like a cross between a crocodile and a shark.
He had also built a large man out of red and blue milk crates, as a tribute to his grandfather who had had a hard life as a milkman, delivering from 3am every day in England. We stayed and chatted for a while and then headed back along the track – the wrong way! We’d gone about a kilometre and hadn’t seen a single green car door so I started to worry that we’d get lost in the rapidly descending dark and be roaming around the opal fields all night. Barry finally decided that we should, maybe, retrace our path and start again from the Opal Tree. He got back OK and we found the correct route – thank goodness! The route is a lot harder to find on the return journey.
Safely back in town, we stopped to look in one of the opal shops, the Opal Bin. There were some lovely opalised fossils on display, the best being a lovely blue dinosaur bone and a small yellow snail-type shell. The lady jeweller carved some of the opal into small dolphins, horse
Lightning Ridge
This area is the only place in the world where fossils can be created from black opal. heads, a frog, and my favourite (of course) a dragon’s head. They were made from the potch, white, grey and black, but had no colour in them. The jewellery, on the other hand, was ablaze with all colours. I do wish I could afford one but the cheapest I saw was $700 for a very small necklace, and the ones I liked went from $16,000 up (I’ve got good taste! Champagne tastes on a beer budget, as my mother used to say.)
Just as we arrived back at our camp site, the sun was casting gorgeous colours onto the clouds and this time I’d worked out how to set the camera for a shot or two (or ten). Wonderful!
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