THURSDAY 28 MAY     LORNE STATION

The morning was cloudy.

T had not been sighted by the time we left to drive into town. Funny, that.

We went to the Opal Bin shop, where the lady rubbed down three of John’s opal pieces. I wasn’t sure if these were bits we bought or found; they’d sort of gotten mixed together. A nice looking piece that from the side had great green flashes on blue, came out plain blue on top, and so no good. She said the other two bits were worth cutting and directed us to a man who did cutting for other people. He agreed to cut the two stones and we could collect them later in the day.

While we were at the Opal Bin, I bought five pendants of rubbed/tumbled stone with little opal veins through. They were unusual and very pretty, not too expensive, and more modern than the usual opal jewellery. One was for me and the others destined for the family females – that was some of my Xmas shopping taken care of!

Did a quick supermarket shop, then it was back to camp.

It had begun to rain while we were in town, and I had this worrying idea that we were going to get rained in at Lorne yet again. But it was not as heavy, out at the station, and eased off. Then, mid-afternoon, there was a huge dark cloud looming, so we packed up much of the camp, hitched the van up and moved it to the more solid ground in front of the Hacienda. We still could access our power and water there. Just hoped the cottage wasn’t going to have any guests this afternoon.

Then we had to unhitch again, to go back to town to collect the cut stones.

We finished up with a small, irregular shaped stone that would be good to have set into a ring, and a larger, paler one, that could be for a pendant. I liked them, but John was disappointed. He’d expected them to be bigger – and also worth more than the $20-$40 the cutter valued them at! But, back at camp, they were admired by one of the lady campers.

I went up to the office and paid up what we owed. The $100 a week had been healthy for the budget.

After tea, a final sit round the campfire, with D.

We  had not intended to be here for this long, but it had been a great stay, and I’d loved it (except maybe for the few ultra muddy days).