Day 3 – Lightning Ridge

The alarm rang out at the (dare I say) alarming time of 5:40am. It takes Gaz and me a while to get going so we needed a bit of time to be ready for our 7am departure time, determined the previous night after a few too many wines. We made a brief stop at Woolies to get some stuff for a picnic lunch and then headed west.

It’s a nearly 3 hour trip with a brief sojourn in Collarenebri which is about halfway. Now we were seeing some outback style scenery and lots (and lots) of native fauna and a few introduced beasts as well. These included (and I hope I don’t forget any as there was a bit of a spotting competition going on): emus, wedge-tail eagles, fox, sheep, goats, cattle, horses, kangaroos (sadly mostly as road kill ), galahs, crows, hmm … that’s all I recall … I was the driver after all.

Having landed at the Tourist Information Centre at Lightning Ridge, we planned our day and hot-footed it to the Black Hand Mine where we were able to check out the fantastic carvings on the walls and learn how they mine opals. We had to go down (and of course later back up) a lot of steep stairs cut out of the sandstone. It was very surprising, entertaining, and educational. They even let us take Buddy down as long as there was a water tight undertaking that there would be no “accidents”, and Buddy was true to his word, performing brilliantly. The carvings were amazing!

We then popped back to the park for our picnic lunch which was, once again, very nice. Highlights were all of us, and a number of other picnickers who joined in, looking in the grass, dirt and dust for Gaz’s wedding ring which flew off his finger when he vigorously shooed a fly. That’s what happens when you lose heaps of weight lol. Kev was the winner in finding the lost ring by the way. I also dropped a few more rocks.

After filling up, we were then energised enough to drive 200m down the road for the others to get a coffee. While there we checked out some Opal shops and museums. After a short drive through town, we finished with a very quick tour of a ‘castle’ built entirely out of rock. Apparently it has been featured on one of the ‘Home & Garden’ type shows and there was quite a story behind it … which is a little long to go into here. Suffice it to say that even though it is 23 years old, it is now heritage listed so it can’t be torn down.

Determined to return to Moree before dusk, we left for our return journey which was unremarkable. We couldn’t miss out on a last minute dip in the thermal pools, grabbed some take away, tidied up for a quick getaway tomorrow and then bed.