Knee Deep Travels

Day 9 – NSW road trip 2020

I have truly lost track of reality. I don’t want to know what’s happening in the news, I’ve stopped checking the work Facebook page to see what’s happening and I honestly can’t work out what day of the week it is. I like this life.

Today we explored Lightning Ridge – it’s a great place with such interesting people. So many characters and people living the simple life.

First stop was supposed to be the Chambers of the Blackhand, unfortunately they were booked out until Sunday (whenever that is ) lesson learnt to book ahead next time. Still, we got a photo with the plugger tree

Took a chance and turned left from here and found ourselves at Lunatic Hill. Here we met DK, an opal miner with a lease in an old open cut mine. DK tells us he has been opal mining since he was 8 and proceeded to show us (from a distance) his mining leases and explain to the girls what he does and how to find opal. He had plenty of tall stories to tell but we loved every minute of talking with him.

The girls had a ball “specking” for opal pieces in the wheelbarrow and left with a little bag of precious finds and a shopping list for tomorrow’s fossicking.

From here we headed to the Walk in Mine – another worthwhile attraction that lets you go underground into an old opal mine and wander around – it was an interesting and thought provoking tour, finished off by a free cuppa while the kids fossicked in the dump pile.

After a quick bite to eat at a local cafe we headed to the John Murray Art gallery. I fell in love with this place. I’m not usually much of an art gallery girl but this one was so much fun.

The artist has painted several murals around town, so we took the opportunity to visit them while wandering and enjoying the town (and a sneaky ice cream with the big kids).

After a stop at Mr Cheap for fossicking supplies we headed out for one of the car door tours.

Lightning Ridge has a number of these car door tours – each a different colour and length. They are a great way to see the town and it’s attractions.

The morning trip was part of the yellow and blue car door tours and this afternoon was the Red tour – a nice little one that shows off some of the regions quirky homes – including a castle, a house made from bottles and the areas only drive through (which is never open – yup someone’s nicked a KFC drive through sign and stick it up on their driveway in the middle of nowhere ).

Back to the van park (highly recommended), we set the kids up to “wash Grandads car” and finished the night off with a game of skip-bo.

We already know we’ll be back here again.

Driving around Lightning Ridge really makes you think about the challenges we face and our motivations sometimes. The open cut mine at Lunatic Hill is a massive scar on the environment. The much more prevalent small holdings leave mounds and mounds of clay and rocks all over the sparse landscape. All for this for tiny pretty stones, that have no use other than for us to admire, and we humans choose to pay a fortune for.

We would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the Kamilaroi lands we explored today and pay our respects to the elders past, present and emerging.