Day 4: Full day tour of the opal fields and pubs

 The cloudy outlook late yesterday did result in around 5mm of rain overnight and some rumbling thunder, but no storm.

Today's adventure starts at 8.45am with the Outback Opal Tours bus picking us up at our caravan park and moving on to a few other venues to end up with 20 passengers, a big improvement on a few days ago when they weren't sure the tour would go ahead because of lack of numbers. It is a good group of mostly Aussie caravaners around our age and a younger Canadian family of four from Kelowna.

Our tour guide, Stacey, is a real character and we can tell we are going to be in for a good day. Married to an opal miner she has some great tales to tell about opal m mining and the social fabric of Lightning Ridge.

The locals are a pragmatic bunch, who have a healthy distrust in government. Driving into the town, the usual town population sign is filled in with a question mark. Stacey explains that is because no one fills in the census.

With a full bus load we embark on a tour of some opal fields that are about 70 kms out of town, and each one is the site of a well supported local pub. Along the way we are given some interesting facts about the industry. The fields we are going to are mining black opal in seams. In some other fields they can also be found in nodules, or nobbies as they are called. Black Opal, the most valuable of all opals can only be found in an 80km radius of Lightning Ridge, nowhere else in the World. The get a mining lease and be a registered miner you have to complete a 3 day certificate course run buy the Department of Mines, and then you may apply to register a lease. Each individual is only allowed 2 registered leases, each no bigger than 50m x50m. This has largely kept big miners out of this industry here.

After about 15 minutes travelling along what can only be described as a corrugated bitumen road, we move on to the dirt and it is seriously corrugated. Fortunately the amount of rainfall we had last night did not greatly affect the road, but over the next few days they are expecting some heavy falls. We see the usual kangaroos, emus, lots of goats and a few sheep along the way.

Our first stop is at the Sheepyards Inn at the Sheepyards Opal Field. Here were are served scones, jam and cream for morning tee, with tea, coffee or many opted for a cold beer.

The scones were excellent

Four dogs in a car were enthusiastically watching us enjoy our scones

After morning tea, it was time to explore outside. Close to the entrance is the Bra tree, where the local ladies have contributed some of their undergarments at one of the many big bashes they seem to have throughout the year at a number of these pubs. It seems there is always something to celebrate.

There does  seem to be a bit of a bra obsession at the Pub.

Outside there is crap everywhere, lots of old cars, trucks machines and some in functioning order.

And of course, it wouldn't be an opal tour if there wasn't time for fossicking. The two Canadian kids were enthusiastic fossickers and collected quite a lot of "promising" specimens to take home.

Fossicking Heap

Next we moved on to War Memorial museum, put together by local volunteers and is the venue for very special Anzac Day celebrations, which continue on for many hours in the normal tradition. The are many ex serviceman and veterans in the opal fields who have contributed to the establishment of this museum and according Stacey, Anzac Day here is one of the highlights of the year. We were told that the current music teacher at the school in Lightning Ridge can play the bugle and had taught some of the kids to play the bagpipes and snare drums adding a very authentic flavour to the day.

It is pretty modest building, built to the Lightning Ridge building code (they don't woory about anything like that)

There is a modest Memorial Area out the front

The displays are a mix of items from various areas of the services and wars

From here we move on to the next pub, The Glengarry Hilton, where we will have lunch.

The tour included lunch with a choice of fish, chips an salad, or chicken schnitzel, chips and salad. It was surprisingly good and all produced out of the  kitchen below.

"Beer garden"

There were a couple of shops nearby selling items made in the opal fields by many of the miners wives

Back at the pub, it looks like the State of Origin Football tomorrow night could be a big night at the Hilton

Once again there was a fossicking area where some of our tour were still enthusiastic about finding their fortune. Stacey was a great motivator, as you had bought along samples of finds she had found in these heaps over the years running tours. The Canadian kids continued to be the keenest prospectors.

We ended up talking to the owner of this huge motor home that he and is family are travelling around Australia in. He and his wife built it themselves from an old bus, taking 4 years to complete the project. What you can't see in this photo is a huge enclosed trailer they are towing which houses a Toyota Landcruiser and a camper van.

There is still one pub to visit in a different opal field at Grawin. This venue is actually a licensed club, and yes, we had to sign in. It is known as The Club in the Scrub. The official name is The Grawin Opal Miners Sports and Recreation Club. Needing to have a sport associated with the club, they built a golf course with 9 holes and sand greens. Apparently players take an electric drill with them to drill a hole to insert a tee as the ground is so hard.

The pool table is a real feature

Enjoying a beer in the beer garden

I suspect they don't get a lot of complaints

For the fossikers, this was their last chance to find there fortune, but by now the drinkers were much stronger in numbers.

Leaving the club, we headed back to Lightning Ridge with a couple of photo stops on the way.

A Group Photo

Our Guide Stacey

The road home

As we approached the turnoff back into Lightning Ridge, we had to stop to get a photo of "Stanley" the giant emu, a metal sculpture originally destined for Birdsville, but far to heavy to transport it there, so it found a home at Lightning Ridge.

Overall we have had a great day. There was plenty of information overload, but it was great to get a feel of what life is like here both as a miner and a family.