The Professional Hobo » Lightning Ridge

Lightning Ridge: Catching Opal Fever

theprofessionalhobo — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:28:00 +0000

“When I close my eyes, I see opals,” said Kelly, shaking his head.
It seems he has a touch of opal fever.

Lightning Ridge and the surrounding areas are famous for its abundance of opals, and in particular the black opal, which can basically only be found here. For decades, people have visited, and never left. They were entranced by this fiery precious gem; one that constantly changes and flickers in the light.

While I appreciate the area and the gem (and in fact acquired a few for my own personal enjoyment whilst here), I didn’t quite understand the fever itself, until I saw Kelly come down with it.

Lucky, this is one fever that didn’t require a hospital, as it did in Hawaii and Thailand.
There are a few ways you can mine for opal:

Own a claim. A few thousand dollars, a few safety and environmental courses, and some heavy machinery later, and you have yourself a mineral claim, and the ability to go underground for opal. More on the opal mining process in a minute.

Go fossicking or “noodling”. You accomplish this silly sounding task by going to the rubbish dumps, where miners have dumped truck after truck load of sandstone from their mines. Although miners have a pretty keen eye for opal, it is very easy to miss a chunk while chipping away at the sandstone underground. This is where the fossickers and noodlers can make a living if they work hard enough. A full-time fossicker in a heavily mined area about 60kms from Lightning Ridge can make an average income of $20,000. Some may say that’s pretty meager, while they will say that they’re outside, with nary a care in the world, and enjoying every day. Fossicking is also the most common way for a short-term visitor or tourist to try to get their hands on some opal.

Actually, the most COMMON way for the average tourist to mine for opal, is in the jewelry stores. In Lightning Ridge, you can mine through store after store and dealer after dealer looking for that perfect piece of opal to take home with you.

There are also a number of different types of opals, and ways of fashioning them into gems too. The two main types of opal are:

Black Opal. Since the back of the stone is black (or almost black, for the “semi-black” or “grey” opals), the colours of the opal shine magnificently. This is the rarest kind of opal, and the Lightning Ridge area is one of the few places in the world to find it.
White Opal. This is a more common form of opal, with an array of glittering colours shining through a milky white stone. White opals can also be found at Lightning Ridge, as well as the well known mining town of Coober Pedy and other places.

As for finding the opal that will suit your pocketbook and still be “the real deal”, here are a few pointers on the different types you’ll find:

Solid Opal. Being the most precious type of opal, your wallet will feel the effects of buying a solid stone the most. It is just as it sounds: solid.
Doublet. A doublet is a thin slice of solid opal, glued on to a black backing of potch (which is technically opal, but is colourless and therefore worthless). Doublets can be quite magnificent since the colours of the stone shine against the dark backing.
Triplet. This is the lowest grade of opal, but also the least expensive. Similar to a doublet, a triplet is a thin sliver of opal glued onto a dark backing, and then covered on top with a layer of silicone or crystal. This protects the stone, makes it look bigger than it is, and helps the colours of your tiny slice of gem to shine radiantly.

And of course, ask anybody in town what they prefer, and they wouldn’t be seen with anything other than a solid opal. Then again, they find the bloody things laying on the ground half the time around here.

THIS POST ISN’T FINISHED! We got to visit a personal underground mine, spend a Friday night at a pub/library/community center/general store with a rascaly bunch, and we even scored some opal! Read the rest of our story here at the World Nomads Ambassador Journal.

Lightning Ridge: The Black Queen Experience

theprofessionalhobo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:18:00 +0000

“Outback theatre with a twist,” says the flyer for Black Queen, with a picture of an oil lamp and a woman with a mysterious look. I didn’t really anticipate that this mining town would exactly have a bustling theatre community, but there it is.

And being an actor/singer/dancer, of course my interests are piqued.
We drive along one of the five guided tours through Lightning Ridge, through old mining settlements. The white sandstone gravel roads weave in and out of this small off-grid community, and without the red car door signs leading the way, we would most certainly be lost by now.

After driving by rusted out trailers and toilets and cars and whatnot, my hopes for a genuine theatrical experience wane. I must admit there’s a sort of artistic beauty to an old car with about 12 cats milling on and around it, surrounded by flat white ground with sandstone piles everywhere. But I’m busy dashing my hopes of seeing a real show so I try not to be too taken with this unique scenery.

Pulling up to Black Queen, though, re-engages my imagination right away. The property, located on the very edge of Lightning Ridge, is charming and unique. The walls of the three cottages that make up this home are made of bottles, stones, and hand-mixed cement, and the surrounding property is filled with old signs about the Black Queen, monuments, and various little surprises for anybody looking hard enough.

We are immediately met by Gail, who is our fearless leader in this piece of outback theatre with a twist. I look over at the other four people joining us for the show, and think “Eek! Awkward. Doing a show for only six people? And I can only imagine how strange it would be if we were just two.”
But as we settle into the first cottage, and the first act, I realize that she can’t fit in many more people than what we have. We are almost a full house. And I also realize that we are actually sitting in the set. This theatre does have a twist indeed.

We have some incredible pictures of the Black Queen, along with the rest of this story, over at the World Nomads Journal here. Check it out!

Lightining Ridge: The People, and The Appeal

theprofessionalhobo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:07:00 +0000

When we rolled into Lightning Ridge, after a series of unfortunate and displeasing coincidences, we were ready to roll right back out the following day.

I was crushed.

Ever since reading about it in the Lonely Planet, I wanted to go, and was prepared to travel out of our way to get there.
Lonely Planet says:

“Near the Queensland borer, this fiercely independent and strikingly imaginative
mining community (one of the world’s few sources of black opals) has real
frontier spirit. Battlers still dream of striking it rich underground here, and
now and again some of them even do. Consequently, the streets are trodden by
eccentric artisans, true-blue bushies and the general unconventional collective.
And that’s all ridgy-didge in the Ridge.”

So luckily, while attending a local Rotary meeting, and consequently spending the following few days enjoying the hospitality of many of the locals, we too had a chance to fall in love with Lightning Ridge.
The Rotary meeting was, of course, wonderful. As Rotarians, wherever we are in the world, attending Rotary meetings gives us a chance to trade stories with other people, all sharing the common goal of providing Service Above Self. We always have a good time.

Chris (short for Christine) was the first woman to open her heart and home to us. She had an additional flat on her property that was empty, so it was “no big deal” to her for us to stay there. Neither were the bacon and eggs in the morning, the wonderful dinner, contacts in Broken Hill and Melbourne, parting gifts, or unmitigated access to her laundry and small fruit orchard. She shrugged off all our accolades of appreciation, and said that it was just as nice to share company with somebody from abroad. We have opened up our (so far nonexistent) home in Canada to her; as soon as we get one, we hope she’ll visit!

I asked her why she and her husband (who was out of town) like to live here, since they are some of the few residents who aren’t here for the opal mining. And it seems that what makes Lightning Ridge attractive is also what makes it hard to take: isolation. At first, she and her family loved small town life, and lived in many of the smaller towns in the area. There is a rampant sense of community, and a real beauty to this chunk of land on the edge of the Australian outback. But now for Chris, with grown up children living in Perth and New Zealand, one with two kids of their own, the negative side of the isolation can be tough.

“It’s hard for somebody to visit us,” Chris said one day. “You have to fly into somewhere like Brisbane, and then it still a full day of driving to and from Lightning Ridge. Not a lot of people have that kind of time these days.”

This is true. You can’t just happen to pass through Lightning Ridge; you have to want to come here. With only one road in and out of town, no railway, and an insignificant airport, it’s not a thoroughfare by any means. We had basically planned our own road trip around Lightning Ridge being one of the determining factors of our route.

While we’re on our sponsored trip courtesy of World Nomads, we’re publishing all full stories to our journal over there. So to read the rest of this post, click here and check it out!

Lightining Ridge: Past & Present, Outback & Inland

theprofessionalhobo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:57:00 +0000

Upon first blush in Lightning Ridge, you may find an opal-mining town with very little to keep you here for more than a day or so. It reeks of an environment trying a touch too hard to be attractive to tourists. The one and only road to leading into and out of town is lined on each side with billboard after billboard featuring opal-related attractions and opal stores. You see a lot of the same adverts over and over again too – on not only billboards, but lining fences, and even painted and plastered into the general surroundings. It’s a little over the top.

But somehow it also adds to the character of Lightning Ridge, which is quirky and whimsical. There is so very much more than meets the eye if you want to discover its colourful underbelly. Allow yourself to stay a while. Head to the bowling club or one of the handful of cafés to meet some locals, and stay long enough to get to know them. If you do, you’ll see a whole different side to Lightning Ridge that is fascinating.

Never have we met such a concentrated group of incredibly generous people, who are so proud of their home town. They were willing to give of themselves to help us, and expressed as much interest in our story as we had in theirs.

Everybody has a different and unique story of how they came to Lightning Ridge. Only a few people we spoke to were born and raised here; almost everybody comes from somewhere else.
“In the old days of mining here, people came here to disappear. You rarely knew anybody’s name, and those names you knew were probably fake nicknames in any case. You didn’t ask much about somebody, and they didn’t tell too much either,” said one person about the opal rush that started in the early 1900s and converted Lightning Ridge from a deserted piece of land to a bustling mining town.

People came from all over the world and bought (or squatted on) “claims”: access to small pieces of land with permission to dig shafts to mine for opal. Anybody could and still can do it; for a few thousand dollars you could set yourself up with a claim, a trailer to live in, and much of the equipment you need to operate your small and practically instantaneous mining business.
And although there are still a number of mines and miners in Lightning Ridge, many of the big miners and prospectors are starting to do their active work further a field. It was when this started happening that the town collectively and individually had a choice to make: pack up and move shop, capitalize on the already steady stream of visitors to town wanting to see what “opal fever” is all about. And so it was that tourism became the main draw (and a large income source) for Lightning Ridge.

Please click through here to read the rest of this post (and see more pictures) on Lightning Ridge. It has been a true highlight of our trip!