Due to our group going on an early bus tour, we shared an excellent cooked breakfast at 7:30am. Last night was relatively warm but we still managed to have a good sleep. Fortunately the rain stopped during the night.
We departed at 9:30am with Black Opal Tours with Chuck our driver. We recommend this tour.
Lightning Ridge is typical of an outback NSW town and is nothing like the other opal town (Coober Pedy) that we have visited. And then you leave the main street!
Lightning Ridge consists of several opal fields located around the main town. It is exceptionally unique with the majority of the claims having some form of residence. Due to high rainfall, the is no underground residences. The variety of the residences as well as the old machine was fascinating. We also noted numerous Holden vehicles in various states of disrepair The method of mining is different to Coober Pedy with most of the ore washed in old cement trucks before being hand picked for opal. Lightning Ridge opal is also very unique.
We visited an underground mine and also had an excellent morning tea and lunch with the tour company.
At the conclusion of the tour went went further opal shopping and will be returning to Sydney with a bucket of ore that our grandson can look at to find opal.
Happy hour was in the camp ground and we returned to the motor home for tea comprising chicken schnitzel and salad. We watched a DVD, completed this blogg and were in bed before 10:00pm. We have a 360 kilometre drive tomorrow and will be detouring to some adjacent opal fields before heading to Bourke for a 5:00pm cruise on the Darling River.
Nice website om Lightning Ridge education please try to give more information.
Try this website. Good information is to be had.
http://lightningridgeinfo.com.au/