Gemseek in Lightning Ridge home of the famous Black Opal
Having left a trail of mud kilometres long we were thankful to be on the bitchamen again, with the help of a local “cow cocky” so it was onward to Lightning Ridge, (no more stops in muddy creek banks) to power up & clean up at the tourist caravan park ready for filming our DVD series episode 2 on Australian Opal.
Clubs and Pubs are a great place to meet the locals in most Australian country towns and Lightning Ridge was no exception, so having cleaned up it was off to the Bowling club for dinner and a chat.
After a good meal we started to mingle around in the lounge bar, it was a great few hours and within walkable distance from the caravan park a real plus. We heard many interesting and perhaps “tall” stories that night of Opal fortunes in the good old days.
Lightning ridge in the good old days looked more like a lunar surface; scrub has grown to hide the 40,000 estimate of mine shafts & mollic heaps.
We heard the “Ridge” as it is affectionately called is home to approximately? No one knows the figure & some say there are fewer than 40 active opal miners in town, and that the Ridge is dead. The population does wain in summer as the mercury tops out at 50 degrees Celsius the majority of people head for the coast & a cooler summer. If it has been a good year then accommodation is ***** 5 star and worth lavishing on oneself after a season of mining, after all its hard work, or is it? These days there is “Big Foot”.
Having been down quite a few mines in my time I was very interested to see “big foot” in action $70,000 worth of equipment to make mining safer & faster. ( Sorry photo of Big foot pending)
We headed off west 65kms to the Wee Warra Opal fields with Richard and his mate Paul alias Pee Body to do a day’s work mining. The Wee Warra fields on the Cumborah road had good indications of Opal bearing ground & a lot of good seam opal has been and still is being dug from this field. Our hosts Richard & Justine Buckley from the Opal Bin are the proud owners of such a mine so we were very excited about the day ahead.
Just a minute I hear you say what are the surface indicators? Well you see Box trees and wild orange trees grow along fault lines to get water & when Ironstone & conglomerate rocks are also visible on the surface –it’s worth taking a deeper look because opal is mainly found around faults, Richard had found colour in all his test holes.
Out on this ridge the opal producing dirt is relatively shallow we were only 25feet down on the first level. We were also impressed with “Big foot” which removed about 12 meters of rock in just a few hours, to the waiting truck upstairs for washing at nearby wash and settling ponds. This huge beast grips into the rock ceiling to stabilize the machine then its long arm gouges out the wall in front and it wasn’t very long before we saw “colour” as it’s called.
They are very inventive people around here and the washing agitators were formally cement mixers. The truck load was tipped into a hopper then up a conveyer belt and into the agitator around she went tumbling the day’s dirt, breaking it up to reveal that precious Black Opal.
Waste dumps are not registered claims but are an excellent area for tourists to fossick, but do be careful & don’t touch equipment, if in doubt ask, as you don’t want the title of “Ratter”= someone who steals opal from someone else’s claim and it happens a lot up here.
Being 4pm there was a cold stubby waiting at the Pub in the scrub & that’s another story so that was it, the day was done and no-one had worked up a sweat. What light work mining can be if you have the right gear as well as the right claim?
We were approached in the main street with a huge piece of blue/green opal to film.
This piece had been a rough boulder presented at the club by an elderly lady asking $850, the money was quickly found for the prise was hidden inside. Rubbed back this piece of opal would fetch $50,000 in Sydney.
We spent 2 great weeks in Lightning Ridge and would certainly recommend it to anyone as a friendly helpful town with a difference, certainly not dead. There are lots of things to do and see in Lightning Ridge so plan to stay a few days at the very least. We have many good stories to share of our time there.
This truly is a community from all nations were they care passionately for their Opal and the people that live there, as well as those who pass through.
“The Ridge” has a charm of her own which keeps drawing you back till eventually you stay, I’m sure we will revisit, now that we have friends there, but for now it’s time to head north in search of different Gold & gemstones, until next time stay safe and look after those gems.
