This was our destination today, to explore the real opal fields (the ones in town worked out 20 years ago, but the town stayed on and grew). The first place is the Club in the Scrub, a 32 hole golf course, just don't expect to see anything green except gum leaves. It is at a field known as The Grawin and was here in 1968 when me and me mate took our gap-week after finishing school.
Further out you come to the Sheepyards, well actually you come to the War Memorial first and 'Lake Beard', then you get to the sheep yards proper, which of course isn't sheep yards anymore, but they do have a decent enough pub complete with train carriage, and wait....markets! The markets were a 3 stall special put on especially for the long weekend.
We had a homemade 'pie' here, which looked a lot like a round waffle, but tasted okay.
Then we hopped over to Glengarry, to 'The world famous Glengarry Hilton', there words, not mine. Its just an old shed and a bar and a trailer/kitchen but they do sell pretty good meals.
They too had a market thing of sorts, over the road at Sweenies, put on just for all us visitors. Nothing really for us, the opal bits looked interesting, but as nothing was price marked, you felt like they were sizing you up, dollar wise, before you asked the question. We fooled 'em, took up all their time chatting about opals, failed to ask the obvious question and then left empty handed.
Stopped to look at the huge piles of mining rubble and found a few horses lazing about under a nearby tree. One turned out to be a baby Clydesdale and was 'cute', another turned out to be just a bit too nosey, wanting to stick its head in the car window.
On the way back we stopped to admire the 18 metre high emu made of old VWs, the latest addition to the Lightning Ridge cultural collection.
The last snap is a picture of 'Uluru' we had the van park artist stick on the side of the truck.
Some snaps:
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| 3rd hole green |
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| first stop on the opal fields pub crawl. we had diet coke! |
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| better not try and rat on his claim |
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| coming into sheep yards. second on the pub crawl |
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| beer garden! |
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| entry to the war memorial |
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| and now for the markets |
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| a couple of hamburgers in the sunshine |
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No, not really, it's the reflection of one of the tents next door! |
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| Stanley looking towards Birdsville |
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