Lightning Ridge NSW 25 July 2017

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 Norseman in WA, and besides, it's just a pile of white dirt. They say that you can 'noodle' in this pile, but the chances of you finding anything are much less than that of being run over by the next incoming dump-truck, which is unlikely, if you stay away from the obvious 'road'.

Further along you come to The Sheepyards War memorial, which is a kind of nice thing to have done and worth a stop for a look, I even took another snap.

War Memorial. Sheepyards, NSW

On then, to the Glengary Hilton. Having seen the converted container and tin shed masquerading as a hotel, we neglected to take that short detour as well,

Finally, we arrive at The Sheepyards, the hotel to be exact. This time they didn't have any food left at all and the barman / hotellier fought against all his principles and reluctantly came to sell us a Bundy Ginger Beer each at $3.50 a pop, before retiring to his seat and his cronies with a dismissive wave of his hand. The opal in the rough they had on display is just a bit of colour, totally worthless, as is the rest of the junk they have lying around. I felt like taking him literally when he said 'knock yourselves out', meaning if we wanted, we could look at all there was to see in his establishment, which wasn't much.

Outside, apart from what appeared to be a new set of toilets, was the same old phone-tree and the same tired tractor. I took snaps, as we wont be back, and we scat.

Dead tractor. Sheepyards, NSW

The Sheepyards Hotel. Sheepyards NSW

Old Sydney Red rattler, Sheepyards Hotel, Sheepyards NSW

Phone tree. Sheepyards, NSW

And what's with the old trains from Sydney? There are at least five in Lightning Ridge. One would have thought it would be heaps cheaper to buy a proper kit bunkhouse specific to your purposes than to buy one of these rusted out contraptions, transport it way up here and then try and convert it to something useful.

Anyhow, having felt underwhelmed by the welcome, we did indeed return to the van park, where we were very welcome indeed to take part in another Mel and Susie show, swim in the heated pool, sit around the campfire, take a spa, and generally enjoy the rest of our stay. Which we did.