Home to Lightning Ridge

18 June 2019 

Another adventure awaits us. This time we plan to head down the Darling River from Bourke to Wilcannia.  Why? - because we have always wanted to do this part of Australia however, on the couple of occasions we have tried to do so we have been thwarted by extremely hot weather and flies. Hopefully this attempt responds well to the Thwart Removal.

The weeks leading up to us leaving today, Tuesday 18 June 2019, were easy if you have multiple doctorates in project management and logistics and are very patient. The logistics of heading off in the caravan with nothing else going on are complex enough. Let's rewind a couple of weeks to a time when our two travellers were informed that the second of our two air conditioners at home was well .... stuffed. Six months ago our two travellers were informed that the first of our two air conditioners in our apartment was also stuffed. So the news of our second one being stuffed was not at all well received by the female member of the two travellers of which I write about. 

I also refer our readers to the stuffed air conditioner in our caravan on our last trip across to Western Australia at the start of this year. The said female was then prone to climbing atop the caravan to wildly swing hammers, axes and any other heavy object against the stuffed air conditioner in a vain attempt to get it working. Upon receiving news that the second of our apartment's air conditioners was now stuffed sent the said female into another wild frenzy. I spent many a day cancelling external cranes and wrecking balls being erected at Pearl Sur Mer organised by the said female.

Kitchen ceiling removed at home

So, two weeks out from today, I took our caravan to the repairers to get the well beaten air conditioner replaced along with a number of general maintenance items. Next I organised for the second air conditioner to be replaced at home. This simple job required the ceiling in the newly renovated and painted kitchen to be removed so that the air handling unit could be removed and replaced along with the 10kva air conditioning unit on the roof. The plasterer cut out the ceiling on Monday last week with my help. Next the air conditioner guys took two days (they promised it would take only one day) to remove and replace the air handling unit in the ceiling, with my help.

Air handling unit being removed

On the Thursday I picked up the now repaired caravan and took it to the storage place while the air handling unit was being installed in the kitchen. Next day, Friday, saw the plasterer back to sheet the kitchen ceiling. 

While all the above is going on, the tiles and membrane on the rooftop that we own above us are being removed by the Body Corporate to be replaced with a proper waterproof membrane and new tiles, amongst numerous other things. The Project Director for this work insisted that the plasterer doing our ceiling work that Friday should help the demolishers upstairs as his project was more important than mine. After a lengthy discussion with the Project Director it was agreed by me that the plasterer would continue to do our ceiling because I had demonstrated a far superior ability to organise resources than the Project Director had. As it turned out I ended up helping the demolishers for a couple of hours in the afternoon so that the rooftop was ready for the membrane man to start work on Monday. The work upstairs and downstairs was finished in time for us to host some friends for dinner on Friday night. This just required the usual shopping, cleaning up the apartment and cooking. Fresh prawns from the local trawlers were required so off I went early because the early bird gets the prawns. I was too early for the trawlers so I went back home to help the plasterer. An hour later I returned to pick up the prawns.

Re plastered kitchen ceiling

Saturday was a play day with a lunch date with other friends. Our caravan fridge was playing up a bit last trip, which may have been as a result of the rough treatment it received travelling across the Outback Way. I turned it on Saturday morning for our planned leaving on Tuesday before heading to lunch with the hope that it would work okay. Sunday morning the plasterer came back to plaster the kitchen ceiling. He finished just in time for us to make lunch for Julie's brother.  
Sunday it rained and stormed throughout the day and, with a fully exposed unsealed concrete roof above us, saw me having to squeegee the roof several times to minimise the seepage into the slab above our whole apartment.   

Nice rainbow from a passing storm

Wet rooftop with all tile and waterproof membrane removed

Early Monday morning the plasterer returned to do the final coat of the kitchen ceiling. Due at 7:30am he arrived at 7am. The final coat was applied and I helped him pack up and sent him on his way at 8:15am. Good timing as the cleaners arrived at 8:30am. While they got to work I went to the caravan to check on the fridge - it was working perfectly. I phoned Julie to advise that all systems were go for leaving tomorrow. I then went and did a shop for the trip to arrive home in time to say goodbye to the cleaners. The rest of Monday was all about getting everything together to pack the caravan and to ready the apartment for lockdown while we are away. A trip to the van that afternoon with all our clothes etc and fridge stuff was followed by the car being packed with chairs, tools camping gear etc back at home.

A rising full moon the night before we left

Tuesday morning we packed the last of the items for the car and caravan into the car, locked up the apartment and set sail to the storage place to do the final load of the caravan and to finally head off. The caravan storage place was having an internal tarmac road laid when we arrived. The freshly laid road could not be driven on until it was rollered innumerable times while it was cooling down. Our caravan was on the other side of the tarmac. We were able to carefully drive across the tarmac to access the van to load it. We then had to wait for the rollering to happen and the tarmac laying equipment laying the second half of the road to get out of the way before we could hook up and drive off. All of that finally happened and we were away at 9:30am. Too easy!

Our camp at Lake Coolmunda

Because the road was being laid at the caravan storage place we couldn't put water in our caravan water tanks as the water tap was on the other side of the new road. So we had to stop for morning tea and a well deserved coffee in Canungra just 30 minutes away. It was then on through Beaudesert and onto Warwick where we had lunch and finally to Lake Coolmunda where we are tonight. I wonder why I'm feeling a bit weary.

Sunset night one at Coolmunda

So here we are are at the end of the first day of our Darling River Run. The weather is clear and crisp with not a cloud in the sky. The roads are quiet and the landscape fairly green. The road kill is exceptionally high with potential stewing steak every 20 to 30 metres on either side of the road. After setting up camp we went for a drive late afternoon to Coolmunda Dam. The birdlife numbers were huge. Swans, pelicans, ducks and 1000's of other feathered feeding things dotted the mirrored surface of the dam. 

Returning home I fired up the new air conditioner. While the temperature plummeted to -0.3 degrees outside in the morning we sauntered around inside our little van in board shorts and a t-shirt (not!).  We met a fellow camper nearby who was heading off this morning to visit his brother on the Gold Coast. His brother lives 300 metres north of us on Marine Parade, Labrador in the Aqua Building where our hairdresser is. Small world.

We too packed up and continued further west. At the tiny town of Yelarbon we stopped to have a look at an old post sticking out of the ground. That post was the end of the original  8320 klm long Dingo Fence and I have to say I had never thought about where the world's longest fence actually started - or finished. So now we all know but, if you're like me, you're wondering why here.

The last post (dog fence)

A little further on we stopped for morning tea at the pretty Goondiwindi Heritage Water Park complete with its own shark and stinger net (go figure) and a big sign warning everyone not to go anywhere near the water due to high levels of blue-green algae. 

Goondiwindi Heritage Water Park

Aboriginal Rock Wells

Along the quiet back roads we continued heading towards St George. Another tiny town soon emerged out of the scrubby landscape. Weengallon has on its outskirts several Aboriginal Rock Wells or Gnamma Holes. The site is fenced off but anyone is free to wander around these strange but important watering holes used by Aboriginals for thousands of years as they travelled from as far away as Mt Isa. A few of the holes are 12 metres deep and have their walls decorated with traditional paintings. The holes were all filled to the top with water so we couldn't see the paintings - they probably used water paints. We had lunch here then continued on with our journey to St George.

The landscape became very flat and boring, just perfect for cotton growing. We travelled for ages through cotton fields with their huge above ground dams and irrigation channels. Finally arriving in St George we set up camp mid-afternoon and chilled out literally in the cool winters day.

Campsite at St George

The afternoon sun went down and so did the temperature. At 7:30pm it was just 8 degrees outside. And so ends day two of our travels. 

Day two in St George saw us wander the picturesque banks of the Balonne River before heading into town for some lunch. After walking back to our caravan, we picked up our car and headed back into town for the mandatory supermarket shuffle.

Morning temperature

Walk along the Balonne River in St George

Flood peaks Balonne River

Flocking cockatoos

Tomorrow we head south to Lightning Ridge where the weather is forecast to be freezing in the mornings with cool days.

21 June - another night of cold winter weather and zero degrees in the early morning saw us emerge from our warm little caravan around 7am. The rising sun made little dent in the just above freezing morning temperature in St George. The clear skies and light winds still allowed us to sit outside, albeit well rugged up, to have breakfast overlooking the frost covered fields behind our campsite. After packing up we headed south towards the NSW border stopping at Dirranbandi for morning tea at the appropriately highly rated Bakery. The lady at the local Information Centre was very informative. A lot is planned and being done in the town to coax the wallets of passing travellers into stopping for a night or two. 

Dirranbandi - Charge of the Wife Brigade

Entering NSW

The road to Lightning Ridge (the Ridge) was busy with lots of caravaners heading north. Eventually we turned off the highway and passed through the colourful gates adorning a cattle grid and headed into the Ridge. Our camp for the night was a toss up between the highly rated Opal Van Park and the lesser rated Lorne Station. 



Lorne won on the grounds that each site could have its own campfire with the trade off being average amenities and  a dusty landscape.  

For the interested reader, Lightning Ridge is named after a ridge of ironstone that attracts lightning where, in 1870, a farmer, his dog and 200 sheep were struck and killed by lightning.

Our campsite at Lorne Station

For the next two days we explored the town and surrounding area. There are lots of quirky things to see as a result of decades of opal fossickers who, when not digging little holes into the ground in search of a fortune, spend what spare time they had building such things as castles, houses made out of bottles and beer cans, shanties and all sorts of things made out of welded scrap metal. To help the visitor discover some of the more interesting things, the community has produced four self-drive car door tours. 

Old car doors are brightly painted  and numbered then hung from trees or propped up on the side of the dusty dirt roads. The Red Car Door Tour, for example, is the "architectural tour" and has red doors along the trail that lead to various points of interest. Some of the doors are numbered and reference relevant information about the location. The four Car Door Tours take the visitor to all four quadrants of the Ridge. We spent one day just driving around doing all the tours. Additionally, there are numerous museums, opal shops and mine tours to extract money from the interested visitor in a way far more efficient than digging a hole in the ground in the hope of finding opal. 

Adverusenebt for a ghost

Some of the highlights along these tours included a well designed and attractive house with several walls inlaid with bottles, the Ridge Castle, Simms Hill (highest point), a KFC Drive In that never opens, largest cactus garden in the southern hemisphere, the Beer Can House, Lunatic Lookout, an old church from a movie set "The Goddess of '67", a 25 metre long colourful caterpillar and thousands of abandoned mineshafts with their associated mullock heaps beside them.
  

All dwellings outside the town limits have to be removable because if the owner of the lease does not renew the permit to mine, the dwelling has to go. As a result, many of the dwellings are just a pile of corrugated iron and recycled frosted up windows. 

House of Beer Cans

Opal diggings

House of Beer Cans (and bottles)

Love this sign

Stanley the emu

Surprisingly most of the opal mining has ceased in Lightning Ridge with all the focus now being in the bush about 30klm west, north of the tiny town of Cumborah in the Grawin and Glengarry opal fields. This was the area we visited on our second day. As with any mining town there is a pub. In this area there are three all within 10klm of each other. We visited the Club in the Scrub at Grawin first. Unbeknownst to us this was a 9 hole golf course with dirt tees, dirt fairways and oil soaked dirt greens and it was holding its annual Championship Day. Imagine our surprise when we came across numerous white golf buggies whizzing around the scrub in the middle of nowhere. 

Arriving at Club in the Scrub

"Green"

The 'road' to the club house goes right through the very active fairways. We did have lunch here as we were able to beat the, what was going to be, very raucous and thirsty crowd currently out on the golf course. Nothing like a huge pile of crumbed lamb chops, chips and a miniscule salad for lunch for me and a steak and salad sandwich without the steak for Julie. After some discussion at the counter Julie's meal was eventually called a salad roll. Imagine the club house later that night after a big day on the course, presentation of trophies and the State of Origin playing on the big screen TV. 

Next it was onto the remaining two pubs. The corrugated and rocky roads were often detoured through the scrub as the old road is now an opal mine. Again the quirkiness of the locals shone through. My favourite was an official road sign in the middle of the bush for drivers to Lookout for Trains. Sure enough 50 metres later was a little sign on a tree saying "Train". 

Passing the Train sign

The cost of necessities in the gem fields

The old road went straight ahead

The local aboriginal community has a wonderful war memorial on the edge of a lake all very well maintained. A little further on, several of the community were seen along the side of the newly laid dirt road digging through the rocks along the edge in search of opal. They were all very busy and quite happy as we carefully drove past them.

Fossicking beside the road

We soon came to the end of the loop road through the wild and unpredictable landscape of  the opal mine fields. We headed home to ready ourselves for moving day tomorrow. This included stoking up the firepit once again, cracking a coldie in the setting sun and chatting to several of the other campers also staying at Lorne Station. The only thing to put a downer on the day was the State of Origin result, but as we all know, if Queensland didn't let NSW win every now and then they would stop coming over to play.

Tomorrow we head towards Bourke and the start of the Darling River. So it seems like a good place to end this Post. This trip is a lot slower than the previous one to WA earlier in the year. Travelling shorter distances between places, staying a little longer in each place, cool weather and the almost total lack of flies makes for a far better trip.

The car, caravan and us are all going well.

Bye for now,

JeffnJulie

    ... the Grey Gonads