We were out of bed as soon as the alarm sounded at 7:00am with intentions of an 8:30am departure for the (3) three hour drive to Lightning Ridge. For once there was not a blue sky, nor was there rain. The sky was very overcast but the clouds were far too high for it to rain.
We were ready to leave by 8:40am and left the caravan park and Narrabri in the dry.
It was only a matter of a few kilometres out of Narrabri that the first drops of rain hit the windscreen and the rain did not stop until a few kilometres before we arrived at Lightning Ridge. It was hard to estimate how much rain had fallen as it was consistent and on occasions, extremely heavy. We had to slow our drive a little due to an increasing volume of surface water on the road. There were few vehicles on the road although a couple of “P” plates decided that they could disregard the speed limit and we were also passed by a rented Apollo Motorhome that was travelling very quickly in an area where we had slowed due to wildlife (kangaroo & emu) either crossing or standing close to the road.
It was dry when we arrived in Lightning Ridge and remained dry whilst “He” did our setup.
We have not been able to tune in commercial channels on our television and we will have to be happy with the ABC until we deploy our satellite dish.
After lunch, we paid a visit to an underground mine and had a look around some of the diggings. Last time we were here we were in a motorhome and were restricted in what we could look at. With the caravan safely in a caravan park, this time we have our 4wd to explore in.
We stopped at the visitor information centre and obtained a lot of information about the area. We also made a call to a tour operator and hope we will get a call back to confirm they are running a whole day trip on Tuesday that will take in another opal field to the west.
We had chicken for tea and spent the remainder of the day listening to the rain, typing this blog entry and watching a movie on the laptop before retiring for the evening. The temperature is still warm despite the rain fall.