Judy & Brian Tour Oz

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 ...

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...