11 September 2012 - Crocodile Caravan & Camping Park, Lightning Ridge, NSW

We have filled our day exploring this fascinating township which relies heavily on tourism to provide its bread and butter. At the entrance of the town there is a sign showing the population; a big question mark. Apparently the 2006 official census revealed there were 2,602 residents however this does not fit when other factors are taken into account considering there are more than 1,000 private post box holders each having multiple users, the electoral roll and the bowling club members, hence the “nobody knows” status.

Most of the permanent residents in Lightning Ridge still live in Camps on the opal fields; a collection of shacks that provide the minimum of living conditions; providing their own electricity, water and all other services. There are four caravan parks in town, this one the smallest by far, and these are full most of the time, not with workers as most of the other caravan parks we have seen over the last month or so, but with Victorians who are come to enjoy the large and very active bowling club just up the road. Lightning Ridge is also one of the must-dos on travellers’ agendas so there are hundreds and thousands of folk just like us.

We spent the greater part of the day on a self-drive tour, all four of the “Car Door Tours”, quite a charmingly unique concept. Discarded car doors of one of the four colours; red, yellow, blue and green mark the track and a pamphlet to decode the numbers on the doors is available at the Information Centre for the grand sum of $1.

A drive about Lightning Ridge

 The tracks took us along dirt roads across ridges which have in the past and hopefully will continue to in the future, throw up their precious treasures well beneath the surface. Mullock heaps add to the desolation however, unlike Coober Pedy, there are trees and other scrub here. Shafts also litter the landscape, and to stray from the marked tracks is considered dangerous. There is a memorial to the first shaft bored into the earth by a Mr Nettleton in 1885. Unfortunately it rendered nothing but did mark the beginning of the mining madness. There are a number of mines open to the public for a fee however we found ourselves on a claim chatting to a miner who works on a 33% percentage of production and was today trying to sell bits and pieces of non-descript opal bearing rock. 33% of nothing equals nothing. His partner has been mining in the area for forty two years and this chap since the early 1990s and here they are still living in the back blocks struggling with life day to day.

I was intrigued to see a notice at the entrance to one of the Camps that advertised fossicking or clairvoyance, a diverse industry to ensure an income from the random passer-by. Another curious sight was a “church” purposely built for an art-house movie “Goddess of 1967”. I thought about the purpose built buildings in New Zealand for Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and the consent hoops jumped through to do so. One of the conditions was that the landscape be restored to its original state. Obviously there was no such proviso here.

It was soon after here that we ran into a couple of Kiwis, from Balclutha, another lot who pop across the ditch for the winter months. Certainly the idea of a few months in Queensland is more attractive than those same months in the Catlins. They, unlike Stanley and Kath in their ex-Maui motorhome, are travelling in a much smaller van, smaller than I would fancy even for just four months. Coincidentally we had seen Stanley and Kath’s motorhome at the Information Centre when we had come past however no sign of them; perhaps they had succumbed to one of the many commercial tours on offer?

The Kiwi connection did not just stop there either. Later we popped into an opal outlet, where the owners mine their own gems and sell beautifully crafted jewellery. Somehow after lengthy conversation with the attractive middle aged woman behind the counter who herself had spent some years working beside her husband down shafts and sifting through earth and rocks, we learned that she hails from Kaitaia, just three hours up the road from our home town. An absolute onslaught of Kiwis on Lightning Ridge today!

Purpose built church; not for worship

I should mention the Lightning Ridge artesian spa, a well maintained bathing pool on the edge of the town filled with 42 degree water bubbling up from deep in the earth. Australia has the greatest artesian basin in the world and its wonders were discovered in the latter part of the 19^th century as settlors desperately sought water in the dry interior of the continent.  The first such discovery was in 1878 near Tilpa, further west of here when a bore was sunk. Free flowing bore water gushes up from depths ranging from 100 metres to more than 2000 metres, and of course it was such a bore that discovered oil in Roma.

For years there was no controlling this perpetual spring however even by 1891 landholders had noticed a drop in water pressure which meant they were using the water faster than it could be naturally replenished.

Approximately 20% of the Great Artesian Basins’ 4,700 artesian bores are uncapped and flow without check, however management strategies are being put in place and hopefully at some time in the near future the in will again be greater than the out.

But getting back to the Ridge’s great warm bath, we dipped our fingers in and could not doubt the reported temperature. One couple was stewing the greater part of their torsos in the bath and the other parts were being grilled in the sun. They excused their behaviour explaining that they had to leave mid-afternoon and felt they could not do so without testing the benefits of the waters. We had no desire to do the same.

Back in the main street, we picked up some vegetables from a chap from Grafton who does the round trip from his home via the Brisbane markets and across to Lightning Ridge once a week. He stays over Tuesday night making sure he sells the lot. Apparently this is a trip of 750 kilometres one way. For the life of me, I cannot see how this can be a profitable enterprise with the cost of fuel. Perhaps it is an excuse to visit an elderly parent in Lightning Ridge? Then it would at least be a tax deductible trip.

John Murray's campervan

We also shopped in the hardware shop, the news agency and the excellent Supa IGA today after drifting about John Murray’s art gallery. We both love his work and again lamented the lack of walls to hang such treasures. Although many, including my husband, would surely argue against this, I was reminded of Pro Hart’s work if only for the delightful sense of humour that shines through every piece. John Murray came to Lightning Ridge in 1983 in his small camper van and lived and worked out of it for near on ten years. Now that van is located next to our caravan park mounted high on a pole and bearing wings, all proof of his truly quirky nature. This is the only gallery where his work can be found in its entirety. He is apparently in the throes of constructing a sculpture of a 16 metre emu using scrap metal from a building destroyed in Dubbo, about fifteen kilometres south of Lightning Ridge. We will have to look out for it as we head south tomorrow.

And speaking of heading south, we have arrived at a decision regarding our direction over the next month, entirely different from Plans A through to D. We have decided to head for Broken Hill before revisiting the Murray River. This means that we will travel nearly 1,000 kilometres across the former “inland sea” of this great continent over the next few days. We have topped up with food, water and fuel and contacted family to tell them where we might be should they need to contact us. We have had little access to regular television, telephone and internet over the past few weeks; it will be much worse over the next ten days or however many days it takes us to cross over.