Lightning Ridge

As were continuing our journey we can not wait for what’s next……..

On our way to Opal Caravan Park we meet a lad named Alfie who gave us advise and directions to a place called Lightning Ridge. We arrived at the caravan park he recommended which was owned by his son called Beau.

We took time off to go to the bowling club to talk to Alfie and had lunch. I was starting to get bored being the third wheel in the conversation, so I started snooping around and found a game room with free internet. At that moment I thought I hit the jackpot as the internet was very fast and we got to stay there for around half an hour. On another day we went back to the club, we had a quick and delicious dinner before mum participated in a raffle. My expectation for her to win was very low as there were about 200 people in the club. One second later everything changed as she won a lot of meat, it wasn’t for me as I am vegetarian, but it was perfect for my dad.

The next day we went on again to the club to test our luck and this time it was great as we got 2 big boxes of vegetables and fruit. I was amazed, I wanted mum to participate in the Easter raffle where you get a lot of chocolate. But my mum said no so we spent the next hours relaxing at home until the next day came.

We started exploring Lightning Ridge and we found an amusement park built from the effort from 5 girls who organized and fun raised the money. It was amazing what people can do, after we paid entry we started exploring. There where slides, ropes, lily pads and much more. We started testing every slide and ride until it started getting boring. We had a lemon-flavored ice pole and found out there were currents. We rode the currents and relaxed. We went to the pool then practiced our dives for a little. We started drying up and started getting warm. We went back home and had some Tec time before doing our homework.

After the past weeks we thought our luck was excellent and thought we might go looking for some black opal. Black opal can only be found in Lightning Ridge, depending on the size and colours, a 10 cent size stone can be valued over $10 000. We went down the Chambers of the Black Hand Opal mine, the atmosphere getting colder by the second.

We reached a wooden door which lead into a shop with opals. I saw all the features in every opal and saw the astonishing colours in it. We went through the mine seeing a lot of art carved into the stone and where’s Wallie tiny paintings.

The challenge was to find all 34 Where’s Wallie in all the art and you would get a price.

We learned about what they do in the mine and how some people have robbed mines. These people called "rattlers", they sneak into successful mines and rob the opals at night. We eventually found 34 Wallies and received a bag of potch I thought at first it was opal, but it wasn’t. I felt ripped off because potch isn’t worth anything but 1 cent. To confirm my thoughts, I went to Alfie because he mines opals, photo below is from his own mining land.

I showed him the bag and he confirmed it was potch and he said he would give me colourful potch. It made me feel better when I saw it then I realised there was signs of opal in it. I was the happiest man ever and I wanted to clean the potch get the opal out.

On one faithful day we went to the art gallery to see John Murray the famous artist. He paints the outback like no other, where it seems like there is nothing he makes it look beautiful. We asked him if he could sign a print that we bought which he did but then he asked me if I wanted to draw on the mural on his gallery. Mum said it was a great opportunity, so I went for the challenge.

He gave me time to think about what I was going to draw, and I finally decided. I chose to draw John Murray suggestion which was the drawing on my shirt of Fin and Jake. I got right into it, starting to draw using chalk before paint. I spent 2 hours on my masterpiece before It was done. I was exhausted, and I ran out of banana’s and bars. I finally finished it and he said it was a great edition.

My parents were proud, so we went to go get a thick shake for $7. I felt the thickness as I tried to drink from the shake. We arrived back at the caravan and my parents started posting it to everyone and it felt weird to me. To finish the day of we went to the bowling club and spent some time on our computers. We left the following day feeling a little sad and missing Lighting Ridge.

Our next stop was a pub called Nindigully. This pub allowed people to camp for free which was great for us as we saved money.

On the way to Nindigully we stopped at our second silo in a town called Thallon. We only stopped to take a photo then we kept going.

Then we got to Nindigully, a place home to flies, I didn’t feel welcome as they attacked me by the millions. We managed to stay there for around a day visiting the wonderful pub. It was outback like with newspaper cuttings animal heads and cowboy hats as decoration. It held the biggest burger I’ve ever seen calling its self the ‘’road train burger’’. It could feed up to 1 to 4 people and the meat paddy itself was about 1.2kg.

Right after the pub my brothers belly starting hurting, he had a bug and we had to go to the nearest town from here. Our next destination was Toowoomba.