Lightning Ridge - after we re-create a bet at Walgett

From Inverell we meandered west, pausing at the historic town of Bingara.  Whilst the famous cafe at the Roxy theatre has closed, we were very interested in the food garden being created on the town common.  This vision of a productive common providing enough food to feed the community is only in its infancy, but we were inspired by the people of Bingara.  Whilst our own plans are much more modest, we learnt a lot wandering around the young groves, and will be sure to visit again to check on future progress.

We enjoyed a night at Glacial Rocks - all taking turns under the little water fall.  It was really peaceful to be camping with just ourselves.  The river provided a melodious backdrop to our evening camp, and we could easily have spent more time in the picturesque place.    Before we left, we all placed a small stone in our pockets - in preparation for our next stop.

Any fans of Banjo Patterson will know the story of the stranger who walked into Walgett Town, with a thirst worth a crown.  The poem goes that the poor fellow is flat broke, but some locals make a bet with him that no matter how far he can throw a stone, he won't be able to throw one across the river.  We made our way down to the river ourselves - and saw that indeed it would be quite possible to fetch a stone over the river.  But the poem written many years before, hints that the 'salt bush plain and the open down produce no quarries in Walgett Town'.

Pre warned by Banjo's words written some 140 years before, like the stranger who walked into town many years before, we each carried a small rock in our pockets.  The black soil banks yielded no rocks, so we produced our own rocks and took our turns throwing them over the silent stream.  If only we had some guileless locals we could have taken on, we might have made some pounds, but I fear the story is out.

Our little bit of quirky history over, we made our way to Lightning Ridge, and set up at one of the local caravan parks.  An afternoon in the pool was in order, so we deferred on our visit to the information centre until the following morning.

With the noodling at the visitors centre not yielding vast fortunes of opal after five minutes work, the little helpers decided we would be best returning to the air conditioned comfort of the car.  We followed a couple of the imaginative 'car door tours' before marking our way underground at the Chamber of the Black Hand.

The tour to the old workings was interesting enough - with our host Trevor being a wealth of information.  Trevor and his wife came to Lightning Ridge 25 years ago for a weekend, and never left!  After previous visits to Coober Pedy and White Cliffs, we thought we had some idea of the tricks to finding opal.  But here, even the Little Fisherman learnt something new.

The 'upper story' of the tour was in the ancient sandstone.  Ron Canlin has spent 18 years carving out sculptures in many forms through a maze of tunnels.  They are simply spectacular, and each twist and turn brought out gasps of delight or peals of laughter.  One handsome fellow took Jo's attention!

A real highlight was getting to meet Ron after our tour, and we had a wonderful chat with him.  He was wonderful with the kids, and even provided the Little Helper with a website to check out to help with his drawing.  Ron might have even admitted it is where he gets his drawing tips!

We visited the John Murray gallery - and this is an absolute must see for anyone who has travelled outback roads.  The colours and humour in his pictures is excellent, but perhaps his largest piece of art is Stanley, a giant emu on the edge of town.  Made up of old VW beetles, Rocky looked on nervously at the fate of his older cousins!

John Murray has some amazing pieces of art - and we bought a couple of prints - as our first real souvenirs for our trip last year.  Even the boys enjoyed wandering through the gallery!

For the kids, Lightning Ridge has an excellent water theme park.  We had a wonderful afternoon at the park exploring it all.  The lilly pads were one of many parts that wore the kids ragged by the end of the day.

One of the things that struck me about Lightning Ridge was the resourcefulness of the locals.  It came as no surprise that the water park facilities were all built by volunteers, with no government money.  As was the construction of Stanley. As was the mysterious appearance of a maze at the best vantage for sunset.  This is a town that sees a need and gets on and does it.  No whinging to government. No waiting for handouts.  I could see why people come here for a weekend and stay for a lifetime.

And yes, the maze was good fun... and the sunset spectacular!

Any such holiday during school time necessitates the requirement to keep up with the homework.  And even with the most supportive school of all, and the most slack of all 'teachers', we still had to make sure we were covering the basics.  The hardest part was marking the books - as it was very tempting (and often essential)  that I check the answers in the back myself..... just to make sure I had the right answer.  These kids will be smart!

Lightning Ridge has now become a service town for other opal fields in the district, and so on our last full day in town, we did the 'Three Pubs in the Scrub Tour'.  And we found the true opal fields, many pits in action - and discovered three pubs that were literally in the scrub.

The Garwin Club was our first stop - with a rough golf course hewn in the scrub and bare earth.  A collection of interesting historical memorabilia adorned the walls, and we enjoyed a soft drink on some recycled bus seats.

Some of the machinery was working as we made our way through the opal fields.  The collection and variety of machinery was amazing - with many items custom made to serve some purpose.  The ingenuity of the manufacturers was beyond question - but it was also clear where their priorities lay.  Whilst the opal processing gear might be fully serviceable, there were signs warning that cars with brakes should give way!!!

The Sheepyard Inn has a strong military association, but we missed kitchen being open (by a couple of weeks) so after a short poke around, we made our way around the corner to the Glengarry Hilton for lunch.

The Glengarry Hilton was another interesting assortment of buildings, but the kitchen was open the beer cold.  We ordered our lunch, and the boys eyes popped out of their heads when the massive plates arrived.  A mountain of chips neither of them could jump over with their chosen chops of schnitzel swimming in a sea of gravy.  There was not a vegetable in sight!

Mum was less than impressed.  At least my burger had a token piece of lettuce, some beetroot and pineapple!  The Little Fisherman declared that if this was mining food, we should pack up and come back here permanently...  It seems one of us at least had caught the bug!

We came back to camp with bellies still full from our indulgent lunch.  The kids for once didn't want much dinner, and after a light meal we wandered down to the Artesian Baths.  These baths are at a warm 41 degrees all year around, fed by artesian waters.  They were simply sublime - and we could easily have stayed here all night - if we could only stay awake for long enough...

It was indeed a delightful way to end our time in Lightning Ridge - we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but for now it was time to start making some ground south and visit some relatively recent volcanoes, explore space and visit an ancient woodland.