This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Monthly Archives: January 2023


by Leave a comment

2015 Travels May 25

MONDAY MAY 25     LIGHTNING RIDGE TO GILGANDRA   311kms

Packing up and moving on was becoming rather routine now, in Bus, the way it used to be with the van. We were away at 9.25am, even after giving dog a decent ball throw and run before we left.

The day was sunny, with some light cloud patches. A very pleasant one for travelling.

The road to Walgett hadn’t improved any. Going the other way was even worse for uneven surface.

Had a morning tea stop in the Rotary rest area at Walgett.

It was a morning for seeing wild life. There were flocks of apostle birds and white winged choughs. We straddled an echidna waddling across the road – at least, the bus did and I hoped the less-wide wheels of the Terios did too. There was a mob of emus browsing in a fairly bare paddock. Then a second echidna – they were on the move today. I wondered if it was the season for echidnas going looking for mates?

Around Coonamble, every paddock gate seemed to have an anti  coal-seam gas sign on it. Clearly a significant issue in these parts.

Refuelled at the same place as before, as we came into Coonamble. Still the same price: $1.359cpl.

Decided to try to get lunch in the town. The highway bends, and we realized a little late that the shops were in an intersecting street. Parked Bus and decided to walk ahead, thinking there might be more shops – and because the GPS indicated there were toilets nearby. Walked a couple of hundred metres, past a couple of houses where there were several dogs, barking behind their fences and acting like they wanted to eat us all. Then we came to a park area beside the river, where there was a good length of parking areas off the road, with picnic tables and toilets. I didn’t want to take Couey – or me – past the dog gauntlet, so John said he would walk back and bring Bus up, then I could make lunch.

Dog and I sat and looked at the scenery by the river, exchanged greetings with other travellers lunching too. John seemed to take ages, but eventually Bus appeared, upsetting Couey, who gets all insecure when it is moving without her on board.

John had in fact gone back to the shops. He produced a ham and cheese crosissant, to share, a sausage roll for himself, and a spinach and fetta roll for me. Very nice it all was. A town with a bakery that produces these goodies had my definite tick of approval.

This was a great place to pull in – and a good town to buy lunch. There was also a Shell servo across the road from the parking area – another possible refuel place.

South of Coonamble, there were sunflowers in bloom beside the road. Maybe they had been cropped around here at some time and these were escapees?

Going southwards, there were good views to the distant Warrumbungles. Much better than seen on the way up – the angle was better.

We passed a rest area, with a small bus pulled in there. A man was sitting outside in a chair, eating lunch. Sitting up in the other chair, for all the world like another person, was a large German Shepherd. Clearly another dog that thinks it is a people…

We went back into the Gilgandra Caravan Park for the night. $29.70 after discount. We were put onto the  site next to our previous one.

Back at Gilgandra – on grass again

After basic set up, took dog walking on the lead for a couple of circuits of the large park, then all just relaxed for the rest of the day.

It was a chilly night.


by Leave a comment

2015 Travels May 24

SUNDAY MAY 24

Another pleasant day.

We had been seeing some advertising about the place, for the annual Opal Fest, late July/early August. After a little discussion we decided that, since we have had “beach” weather here, without the sand and sandflies, it might be enjoyable to come back here at that time – if we could get in here. For me, the greatest joy of beachside stays is long walks in the shallows; with the current ulcerated leg, doing that would not be possible. So the attraction of the coast had waned.

I visited the office and enquired about site availability. The very nice lady there did some juggling and managed to get us twelve days, back on the en-suite site we are currently occupying. How good was that? I’d asked if fourteen nights was possible, but very happy to settle for twelve. So we would be back at the end of the row of en-suites – wonderful. Now we just had to hope that the weather would be as nice.

John went to the Sunday morning markets in town, to buy some more of the lovely fruit cake.

We walked across to the park’s fossicking area, off to one corner of the undeveloped part of the grounds. Just wanted to have a look at their set up. We’d had some discussion over whether the heaps of mine dirt had been brought in, or came from shafts right there. To me, they seemed too extensive to have been trucked in. The park was located right at the extremity of where there had been diggings, so there might have been some mining here.

Fossicking area

A sign over the gate to the area named it as Ratters’ Flat. On the fields, a “ratter: is someone who sneaks around and steals opal from other miners’ claims.

There were definitely shafts there. Plus the full assortment of equipment usually found on claims, including an agitator made out of an old cement truck.

All the gear of a mining claim

Gave dog some exercise while we were over there.

 Great place for chasing the ball…

 Had heard some talk that the park owners were planning to add more sites, across in the area where we have been dog exercising. There was certainly the demand, at this time of year. When I took dog walking around the park, in the late afternoons, and mornings, it was rare to find an empty powered site, and there was often overflow into the unpowered parts. They even often have a van parked in the central access road – which is wide – plugged into one half of the double power point on the side of the septic tank. Prime location?

Did a little organizing of Bus, for tomorrow’s travel.


by Leave a comment

2015 Travels May 23

SATURDAY MAY 23     LIGHTNING RIDGE

Weatherwise, another very pleasant day. I have really been enjoying that aspect of being here.

John was feeling like a quiet day in. He spent time on his laptop, interspersed with taking Couey over to the exercise area for a run.

I read, walked the dog, wandered around the park, taking photos.  Drove to the IGA to stock up a bit on food.

The row of en-suite sites…and whimsical metal art

Later in the day, John drove to the shops and picked up the Saturday papers and I read those.

Every couple of days, there was a stall set up in part of the camp kitchen, selling opals and jewellery made from same. I wasn’t sure if it was always the same people, or if the privilege was shared around. I had not really bothered to look closely as these, as such set ups tend to feature doublets and triplets, put into pre-cast settings, which I usually fins overly ornate and cheap looking.

John went across to today’s stall and came back having bought a pendant, which I really liked. Eat your words, Wendy! So he said I could have that one and went back to the stall to buy another one for his daughter. I went with him this time, and finished up buying a pair of earrings for me and a pair for M, for Xmas. Some of the jewellery on display was quite good value.

Camp kitchen area with powered sites beyond

I roasted chicken drumsticks for tea in the electric frypan, set up outside. Roast vegies too.


by Leave a comment

2015 Travels May 22

FRIDAY MAY 22 LIGHTNING RIDGE
Another pleasant morning spent in the usual ways.
As we’d promised, were at the Chambers’ office – a room in a private home in town – at 1pm. Paid for our yesterday purchases and chatted for a while until an incoming phone call ended that.
I was pleased with the ring. Out in the natural light, it is quite brilliant and I loved the red flash that happens at certain angles.
Since the tracks have had time to dry out a bit after the storms, we decided to tackle the remaining two car door tours today.
Before that, drove out to the cemetery, where we had not been before. It was very interesting and larger than I’d expected. There has been some sort of project to renovate or restore it, by putting simple white crosses on a lot of the older graves and ones with no other identification.

Lightning Ridge Cemetery
Some of the crosses had the names of the dead person there, others simply said things like “unknown miner”. One wonders how many enduring family mysteries form the back story to these?

Old graves
There was a real range of graves there, from the unknown, to some with really ornate head stones and memorials.

As one would expect in an Australian opal mining area, there were a number of “foreign” names, plus inscriptions like “died in mining accident”.

A young tragedy
This tour was only a short one. Like the others, it takes in some areas of diggings, and the tracks which wind through these.
The main feature on this tour was the Cactus Gardens. We did not go in to these, on this visit, but in 2009 had found them fascinating and well worth going to. The sheer number of varieties he had there was amazing as well as the great range of size, shape and colour between them.
Lightning Ridge seems to have inspired some people to put huge efforts, time and resources into unusual projects like this, the Opal Cave building, the Chambers of the Black Hand. Something about the life up here?
We did take a side track off the route, into an area of diggings, There seemed to be current activity at these.

Some opal field dwellers like their privacy
Our final tour was the Red Door one, which starts quite close to our caravan park. The major feature of this was Amigo’s Castle.

Amigo’s Castle
Amigo started building this more than twenty five years ago, perhaps as a change from fairly unproductive opal mining? He used stone from the claim to start building a structure and it just kept going. Eventually, he had to source stone from all over the area.

So many rocks used…
The time, effort and sheer imagination that has gone into this is amazing. The quality of his stone work is brilliant. It is quite a surreal structure to come across in such an area.

Entrance to Amigo’s Castle
We were greeted by a lady who – after a suitable donation – gave us a tour of the place. It is not finished – perhaps it was never going to be – as sections kept being added. But Amigo had clashed with various authorities over issues like putting up a “permanent” structure on a mining claim, and OHS for visitors. The freedom of spirit that is almost a prerequisite for life as an opal miner is rather incompatible with a rules-based society. So Amigo had done a significant dummy-spit and retreated to a camp behind the Castle. The lady and her partner had some sort of arrangement with him, whereby she used part of the place as a gallery for her art works and does the little tours, thus keeping all the unwanted tourists away from Amigo in his seclusion.

Fields from a Castle turret
Her art works were unusual, some three dimensional, interesting.
We were able to wander about and take photos. She did say that Amigo never throws anything away. The glimpses of his camp that we were able to get from the Castle, would verify that!
A little further on, in this section of old diggings known as Pony Fence Field, was another amazing structure. Similarly ambitious, and another “castle” of sorts. This one was of concrete – rounded shapes – made of concrete forms set in old oil drums. A Polish man won a lottery and set about building this Monument to Astronomers in the 1980’s and 90’s. He died when his camp burnt down in 1998, so this structure looks unfinished, and there was no access.
The Blue track was very winding, and not well supplied with blue directions, so we were not sure if we were lost, but eventually emerged into a known area through the Kangaroo Hill fields, onto the airport road, and went back to our camp. It was late afternoon by now.
I cooked fish from our freezebox, and fries, for our tea.


by Leave a comment

2015 Travels May 21

THURSDAY MAY 21     LIGHTNING RIDGE

After last night’s rain, the caravan park grounds had lots of small puddles, but they had built it up well, above the original black soil flats, before putting on the surface stones, so it was not too bad. I was very glad we were not out at Lorne!

When I got up and came outside, noticed that the neighbour had a lot of water pooled in his awning roof, to the extent I was surprised it hadn’t given way. He was out and about and eventually noticed and drained it – water everywhere!

John was up about 9.30 – early again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to bowl today as the grass would be heavy and hard on his shoulder. Eventually he decided to cancel.

We had some rain showers through the morning, then it eased off.

Rain at the Ridge

Drove into town, to my favourite shop, the Opal Bin. It was a relatively small establishment that largely stocks just their own locally mined opal.  They have really good quality jewellery and cut stones. I picked out a ring I liked – both the stone and the design. But the stone wasn’t fiery enough for John’s liking. After much discussion, I ended up buying an oval stone with lots of greeny flashes in the dark blue background. They would have it set by their Sydney jeweller, which could take up to three or four months, as his work is in much demand. The opal lady and I sketched out the design for the setting. It would be worth waiting for.

A pair of unusual earrings caught my eye. Large ovals of grey, polished, potchy stone, with thin veins of bright green opal running through. Had not seen anything like that before, so had to have those too. That’s my Xmas and birthday presents for this year well and truly taken care of.

The metropolis of Lightning Ridge

We then went and browsed the John Murray art gallery for a while. His art is of the quirky Australiana style – quite unique. Stylized emus feature often. His designs have been put onto postcards, mouse mats and the like. There were prints in a variety of sizes, and some original works of art. The latter were well beyond our means! I bought a stubby holder for M and two smallish prints, already in mats, which John could frame. These really captured the essence of the fields, I thought. Then John was captivated by a Murray emu – a sticker about 50cm tall of its neck and head, with the typical puzzled/resigned expression on its face, that Murray emus have. He said it would go on the glass panel beside our front door. Well, that will make for an entry with a difference!

John was really pushing for me to see the opals at the Chambers of the Black Hand. We drove out there. The two men were there, but they said to come back just after 3pm, as now was lunch time. My thought was that they were really quite lackadaisical about business and I was inclined not to bother at all. But John was determined so back we went at the indicated time.

 There was a group of maybe a dozen people, starting the 3pm tour. We were to follow them down to the gallery level. I was not sure when “might bring up trays to show you” got transformed into me actually going underground, but that was what happened.

We had to walk down some sixty steps, of varying depth and width, cut into the rock. Care was required. Once down there, after the tour people had disappeared further into the depths, we browsed fairly thoroughly. They had quite a lot of doublets – pretty, but I prefer to buy solid opal. There were a lot of other items where the stone had been cut to fit pre-cast settings, which I rarely like. But I did find an irresistible ring – a plain gold setting, with a sparkling blue-green stone, with a flash of red. John bargained and got quite a good deal. He also bought an $80 jar containing about eight really nice little opal pieces. I think I am now on to my 2016 presents!

When I went to pay for our acquisitions, my two cards would not get approval, because my earlier transactions had hit our daily limit. A bit embarrassing. We arranged for them to hold our purchases and we would go to their office in town, tomorrow lunchtime, pay and collect.

I was not at ease, underground, and was very happy to be climbing back up the narrow sixty steps to daylight.

We had certainly done our bit for the economy of Lightning Ridge.

On the way back to camp, stopped so I could take a photo of the town airstrip. This was fully sealed – it is a “proper” airport – but I’d noticed, driving past, that the sealed strip appears over a rise, goes down a dip into a hollow, then starts to rise again. Could be an interesting one for pilots new to it…

The undulating airstrip

Tea was pasta with bottled sauce – a chargrilled vegetable one.

The rain set in again at night.