With the two other couples travelling in two vehicles, we decided to travel in convoy to the Grawin Opal Fields, a place which we visited during our last visit to Lightning Ridge.
The Grawin is really like the “Wild West”, there is no law, people travel in unregistered and certainly unroadworthy cars and those who live there are very protective of their opal leases. The roads are all gravel, are not maintained but it is a fantastic place to visit. This is the home of the Australian “Black Opal”.
We started at the “Club in the Scrub” where we all had coffee, then onto the “Glengarry Hilton” for a short stop, then the “Sheepyard Inn” before returning to the “Glengarry Hilton” for lunch. Later we stopped at their war memorial and had a quick look in the gravel on the road for opal. No luck there. “He” was able to safely fly the drone and take pictures and video of the opal fields with a 360 degree sweep of the area.
After returning to the caravan park, we were collected at 6:30pm by Outback Opal Tours and transported to a bush theatre called the “Hidden Gem”. This was originally the home of renowned artist, John Murray. He sold the property in 2017 to Mel & Susie and they now host a presentation play about the opal fields followed by stew, damper and desert in front of a wonderful open fire. We returned to our camp site just after 9:30pm. We had a late night hitting the pillow just after 11:00pm.