Judy & Brian Tour Oz

  Roma Qld. July 12th 2023 Before we hit the road today I took an early morning walk up to the artesian bore spa and a had a bit of a soak in the 40°C mineral laden water. Supposed to be good for all manner of kinds of complaints. Always busy, night and day. It's free and you just walk in and jump in the pool. Quite refreshing given that the air temperature was about nothing. I also grabbed a great snap, looking back up the road toward the spa, with the sun shining through the steam coming off the spa and blanketing the road. Steam and fog from the artesian bore spa. Lightning Ridge NSW But then we had to leave and tackle the 420km run up through Hebel, Dirranbandi, St George and on and on up through Surat and on to Roma. Pretty straightforward but a bit tiring. Quite pleased to pull into the Big Rig Van park and have a bit of a chill out.

  Lightning Ridge Day 3 July 11th 2023 A day doing not much, just wandering around. Found a decent coffee shop, The Bumble Bee or some such, run by the people who had the other one out on the main street last time was here Poked our noses into John Murray’s Art Gallery, ticked of all the ones we had, added some more to the collection... The Ghan. Artist : John Murray, Lightning Ridge NSW Should have bought this one as well... Next time! Visited the Walk in Mine , which is just a walk in ... and out, checked out the layers of sandstone and opal bearing siltstone, watched the video, watched another video, perused the shop.  Judy on  the jack-hammer. Walk in Mine, Lightning Ridge NSW Visited some real opal shops in the main street, one had really nice settings and mostly proper solid opals, with a solid price tag, the next had almost ok settings, lots of pieces at more reasonable prices, and then there was the original one. The jewellery pieces look like they are ...

  Lighting Ridge NSW July 10, 2023 Just Rustic, Bardo Station, Lightning Ridge If yesterday was more of same, today was out of this world. We had asked at the info place about anything new in town and they had told us of this fairly new tour. It's a museum of 'old things', hence the Rustic name, located out on a farm 30km north off town. A nice easy run of about 30 minutes over excellent dirt and gravel roads takes us out to the station.  The driveway leads to a clearing where there is a large shed and a few old cars and trucks, and a helicopter. It's not really a proper helicopter, just one the owner Robert Turnbull made up out of bits 'n pieces laying around the place. Just for fun. Actually he made it up, called his neighbour, who was struggling with the effects of the drought, and told him he had a new helicopter. The neighbour hot-footed over straight away and when he saw it, laughed his head off. Mental health treatment 101. Helicopter, Just Rustic, Lightning ...

  Lightning Ridge July 9, 2023 Easy run up from Armatree, through Coonamble to ‘The Ridge’. Road no worse can last time, maybe better in places, although there were plenty of “80 kph, Reduce Speed, Rough Surface” signs. Not that you could tell the difference. At one stage we amused ourselves by  taking   snaps out the window of the mirage you always get here. Mirage, somewhere south of Walgett Lightning Ridge doesn’t seem to have changed any: favourite coffee shop has gone, another one has opened around the corner. My old house on the corner seems even closer to collapse, but apart from that, nothing much different. Been snapping this old house since 2011 We approached the Info place to see what was new around town to find that there was a new tour, a bit out of town, so we booked that, and the ‘old lady’ whose house we toured many years ago was back, and open for tours again, so that’s a starter as well. To finish off the day we cruised out to the Ridge proper to wa...

Lightning Ridge NSW 17/18 July 2019 This is our fourth visit to the Ridge, just a quick two-night stop-over, mainly to catch the tour and show put on by Mel and Susie, the bush poets we first met in Winton ten years ago. Before I mention the Mel&Susie tour, I have to say that the road from Coonamble up to Walgett and on to Lightning Ridge is still rubbish. Looking back through this blog, it's been that way since our first trip here in 2011. Even though it is sealed, you could use this as practice for the Gibb River Road and travel at 20kph for the 240k. The tour. We were picked up from the van park at 630pm, just 10 of us. Mel and Susie moved to the Ridge about 5 years ago, when they bought the 'camp', as houses are called, which was set up by John Murray, the famous local artist. The tour started with the girls giving us an hour long show of material all about Lightning Ridge and its inhabitants, which was very entertaining. They followed this with a tour of the ...

Had a quiet sort of morning, read a book, had a swim or two and sat in the sun for a hour. I could get used to this. In the afternoon, we took ourselves over to the 'real' opal fields, which are 60km to the west of Lightning Ridge, past Cumborah, past Grawin and onto Glengarry and The Sheepyards. We did this last time we were here and enjoyed ourselves, but this time it just felt like a waste of time. The first 30km of road is good bitumen, and as long as you stay on the alert for sheep, cows, goats, dogs, alpacas, emus etc, it is an easy drive. Then there is the 30km of dirt road, opal mining debris really, which was quite rough. We resisted the temptation to take the short detour up to the Club-in-the-scrub, which is a tin shed masquerading as a Golf Club and at which there is nought to do except buy overpriced drinks. One could play golf I suppose, but that's not us.  The next attraction is the big mullock heap, and yes it's big but not as big as say, the one in ...

Today we did the Lightning Ridge car door tours. There are four trail, each one marked by a series of car door painted in that trail's colour: red, yellow, blue and green. One surprise for us was that they want you to give them a dollar for the info sheet, which was ok I guess. One thing that was not a surprise was the rudeness of the woman in the Info Centre, as they were just as unhelpful and rude 3 and 6 years ago. Maybe it's their idea of fun: annoy and ridicule the tourists who come in at the rate of 5-6000 a month. I was going to present a pictorial coverage of the trails, but as it turns out, most of the explanations of each numbered door simple said to move on to the next door. Anyhow here's a few just for fun: Red door tail. Lightning Ridge, NSW Highest point on the ridge. Lightning Ridge, NSW Yellow door trail. Lightning Ridge, NSW Yellow trail. Lightning Ridge, NSW Lunatic lookout is a ledge at the top of the hill. The Three-mile mine ar...

    Another freezing night in downtown Dubbo. No problem, today we head north to Lightning Ridge. We are pleased to report that Warrawillah still exists and we said hello in spirit to the Mortimer clan as we flew past on our way to ‘Gil’. Through the town and out along the road, past Gulargambone with its stylised corrugated Galahs and real-life emus. We have never seen so many, one near the road had a heap of chicks as well. We stopped for a break at Coonamble, and enjoyed ourselves by getting the chairs out and sitting in the sun in the local park with our cuppa and a piece of cake.  Apart from the herd of cattle eating their way up the long-paddock and the distraction of sliding through Walgett, possibly the most distressed town in NSW, the rest of the drive to The Ridge is uneventful and we arrived at our park in time for a late lunch.     One of the reasons for coming here was to see those great Australian bush poets. Mel & Suzie, who abandoned Wilton ...

Some of us got up early and went for a spa at the natural spring just up the road. Others had to be coaxed out of bed, but then I got to go twice! Went back to John Murrays art gallery and just had to buy a couple of prints on canvas as well as an ordinary print that the man himself signed for us. Just love his work.Wandered about, bought some rubbish as well as anzacs and raspberry slice at the surprisingly big market and even went on an organised tour in the arvo, just for fun. It was the cheapie tour with the worlds loudest, most self opinionated guide (actually he might not be) who really wasn't fussed about the tour as there were only 4 on board his 20 seater bus and it was Sunday and all. Anyhow, despite hie and the Whiners, we had a good poke about some stuff we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. Finished the day with a coffee at the cafe d'wheels and then a good old noodle on the mullock heap at the info centre where, just last week, according to the guide, ...

These places don't actually exist on yer satnav, they are opal mining fields west of the 'Ridge. West of Camborah actually. 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 hop...