Lightning Ridge

We’ve made it to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in a roundabout way.  A few days ago we left Newcastle and had a little time to kill so we decided to make a little detour.  We spent 2 nights in Lightning Ridge.  This is one of the few spots in  Australia where they mine for Black Opals.  So we thought “why not?” and off we went.  

Once we got outside of Newcastle it didn’t take long for us to get into the bush. We went  through hot spots like Quirindi, Gunnedah, Narrabi and Wee Waa! Not quite to the outback but we were definitely in the bush! Our travels took us through a lot more farming areas.  In fact, we went right past the Australia Cotton Research Center.  It seems that cotton is grown a lot more here than I ever would have expected.  In addition to huge farm fields, we saw lots of Eucalyptus trees, Koala signs but, no real koalas.  We also saw quite a few emus and kangaroos.

Folo the colored doors

Lightning ridge is quite a quirky little town.  It’s built around a ridge that is mined for Black Opals.  Most opal have a bluishness to them, black opal have red flecks in them and are pretty rare. We took a tour of a worked out mine that was actually quite interesting.  At the deepest we were only about 30 feet below the surface.  Of course the gift shop at the end really got our (Gails) attention.  The owner did give us a volume discount. 

Most of the mining in the area is small privately owned and financed by rugged individuals.  They are a hearty lot. :)  They start by digging a shaft down about 30’ to where the soil and conditions are right for the formations of the opals then find a seam of potential ore and then they commence to digging tunnels along the seam.  Most of the digging is done with picks, shovels and a small jack hammer.  The digging is mostly through sandstone and clay so no real layers of hard rock.  Then they use a wheelbarrow to haul the ore back to the shaft where it’s dumped into a bucket on a rail that will take it to the surface and dump it into an old cement truck mixing tank where they will wash out the silt and dirt and hopefully left at the bottom is the rock with opal.  Nothin’ to it. Quite a lot of discarded cement mixers around too. Surprisingly there are only a few open pit mines. Lots of “tailings”, piles of whitish rock, are pretty much everywhere, mostly clay remains. You can go fossicking (digging around) on these piles in hopes you will find your own opal.

Hoist

This area is also on the border of Queensland and probably has a lot of wet weather come summer time. Farther north, it’s called the wet and so much rain falls that many roads are impassable. Most of the vehicles are high clearance, SUVs or a sort of a pickup with a small bed and in pretty rough shape. Most of the miners we saw looked like a typical miner, long beard, mish mash of clothes or overalls, dusty desert rat. Camps (or their homes) were the same cobbled together whatever could make a wall. Pretty funny actually.

Miners camp