Lightning Ridge, Pt 180, April 14th to 15th (Pictures)
Heading out of Brewarrina along
the 
Lightning
Ridge is the only place in the world where black opals can be found. The black color of the agate-like substrate
makes the bright colors of the precious opal crystals shine especially bright. Nice
pieces like the one shown here with many different colors can sell for
$6000. A vein of good opal can earn $1000/foot. Of course there is
a lot more poor quality opal, potch, than there is good. People come to Lightning
Ridge as often to soak up the casual outback atmosphere and buy opal as to try
to find it themselves. The place is famous for its funky sort of
tourism. Self-guided tours are marked by car doors painted in bright
colors with numbers corresponding to the site. The tour brochure for a
typical spot reads "#4. 0.8km. A mechanic's yard on the right is crowded
with machines. He'll get around to fixin' them one of these days! the
You can "noodle" for opal in a pile of opal clay next to the visitors center. We spent some time there - more about that later. Another free attraction is the hot springs, open 24 hours a day where water rich in potassium salts flows from the Great Artesian Basin at 41.5 degrees centigrade (108º F). Of course there are bus tours and mine tours, restaurants, pubs and many other tourist attractions. We were more interested in showers and laundry for starters.
Then, since I had power, I tried to download pictures from my camera to my laptop and they stopped talking to each other. I was worried that I might have lost about 100 pictures and no one was available to help on a Sunday. So I made some test leads to diagnose the refrigerator problem and Cheryl took the lamb chops and a load of vegetables drenched in herbs and fresh olive oil to the community kitchen and barbeque.
Cheryl made an impression on the kitchen crowd by grilling vegetables. One of them made an impression on everyone else with a "butterflied" leg of lamb. It looked really good but took a long time to cook. His wife arrived to say the rest of the meal was ready and made him cut it up to cook faster.
The next morning, we intended to noodle for opal in the pile next to the Visitors Center for an hour or so and then tour, soak etc. We got started working through the pile of "opal clay" using some water to wash down the white dust and find pieces of clay with a vein of opal through them. We found some nice pieces and showed them to some other tourists who had not found anything yet. They brought a piece of ours - not terrific gem quality, but nice - over to a local opal miner who happened to be nearby. We learned a lot about what to look for from him and stayed longer than we planned. His name was Paul Bailey and he invited us out to look at his claim. We took him up on it and drove about 10 miles, mostly on paved roads, out to his claim. He was very methodical and worked without power tools. the first thing he showed us was a straight shaft with flat walls and a metal ladder. He used a windlass to lift the mullock out of the shaft and a pump to circulate fresh air into the mine. Carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas can kill you if you don't take precautions. He also showed us his first tunnel at the bottom of the hill. He lived in a camp next to this tunnel at first but now had a trailer up top. He did find some opal in the first tunnel but stopped before it was exposed. People, known as "ratters", often sneak into tunnels when the miner is away and report on the mine to claim jumpers or snitch ore. He figured the shaft would reach the vein from above and provide natural circulation without tipping off the ratters. Paul lived a very Spartan life but found a lot of inspiration in the solitude and in Sri Sathya Sai Baba, an East Indian guru.
Back in town, Jamie at the