Trip 13 - Bourke

WORDS BY: Fina
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don
As we arrived in Bourke, a smallest town which serves as the gateway to the Outback, we headed out to May's Bend, another free camp site approximately 10kms out of Bourke. However, this camp site is also situated on black soil and since it has rain at sometime or another where ever we have camped, we decided to give the black soil a miss and head into a caravan park. Plus with loads of washing to do, water tanks that needed refilling and batteries that could do with a 240 volt charge, a caravan park seemed the best choice.


With 2 caravans parks in Bourke, both owned by the same person, we decided on Kidman Camp which is situated 7kms out of town. This caravan park has more space than most and you don't feel like a sardine in a can.


One of the days we spent here was driving around the hundreds of acres of black soil trying to find good 4WD tracks. We found some but nothing to get the adrenalin rushing.


Heading into Bourke town one day to pick up some supplies, we ran into our first NSW breatherliser testing. Instead of blowing in the tube all you have to do is count up to ten in front of the valve and that registers whether or not you are drunk. Very nifty, haven't seen anything like that before and the cop wasn't bad looking either, for a white man!


Again, another short trip so another short trip report. Hope you are all enjoying the website and don't forget to call us every now and then.


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Trip 12 - Brewarrina

WORDS BY: Fina
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don

On Monday 16 June 2008 we left Lorne Station, Lightning Ridge to Brewarrina for some free camping beside the Barwon river. Once again, we decided to go the back way on the dirt roads through Goodoonga.

Brewarrina is nestled on the banks of the Barwon and Darling Rivers and is known as the 'Fishing Capital of the West'. The earliest Aboriginal tribes built an elaborate network of rock weirs and pools stretching for half a kilometre along the river to catch fish swimming upstrea. Estimated to be at least 40,000 years old, the Brewarrina Fish Traps still survive today as one of the oldest man-made structures on earth.

Our four days at Brewarrina were spent at Four Mile Campground approximately 6km out of town. A free camp site right next to the Barwon River. Our days were spent trying to catch fish and yabbies until a local told us that for some reason or another, the fish are not on the bite.

So our days were lazing around. We were camped 4 metres from the river with beautiful sunsets. Our only predicament was that we had camped on the black soil under gum trees. I know, I know, stupid move and we knew this once we were packing up. The black soil had turned to muck from the previous day's rain and the constant heavy morning dew. The gum trees continued to ooze out sap onto our camper and the birds in the trees - well you know what they were doing! But we managed to get out fine with low gear and lockers, the car and trailer made it up the hill out of the wet black soil. Definitely a beautiful place to stay and relax but just watch the weather otherwise you could be stuck there for days waiting for black soil to dry.

However we did meet a couple of guys travelling together but independently in separate vans. Timbo was in a wheel chair, a parapelgic from a motor bike accident. His van was completly set up for him and the wheel chair and we were quite impressed that he was travelling alone. Rolly is an ex Canadian who has spent the last 30 years in Australia. Both come from Tasmania and we promised to look them up whenever we get to Tassie.

As we were heading out of Brewarrina, the classic air filter rattle started again. This time two bolts had completely snapped off the cast iron filter box so repairs at the local service station were in order. Once done we were on our way to our next destination, Bourke.

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Trip 11 - Lorne Station, Lightning Ridge

WORDS BY: Fina
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don

Since we had already visited Lorne Station last week to visit Dot, we decided to leave the council run caravan park on Sunday 8 June 2008 and stay out at Lorne Station for a few days before heading further westward.


Lorne Station is situated 5kms out of town on 10,000 acres. It offers a variety of accommodation to suit everyone's budget and needs. A powered site with water and hot showers is $18 per night however with more of a bush setting atmosphere than the caravan parks in town.


Dot took us for a walk around the property to a dam and specking area. We put a couple of opera house yabbie traps in and have been getting a good feed of yabbies every day since then.






The managers of the property, Allan and Keith, put a country show on Sunday night wth Allan singing and playing the electric guitar and Keith singing and playing the aquostic guitar. It was a very enjoyable evening around the communal camp fire listening to old and new country songs. Not much light so sorry about the dark photos.


This working cattle station was inherited by Peter from his father. There is still loads of scrap metal, old machinery, old trucks and old cars hanging around the property. There is also an art gallery on the property which has very interesting and unique art displayed.




The station also used to be an opal mine however no mining has happened here in years. Instead, there are mounds of left overs which Don has slowing been going through trying to find that elusive opal.


Our days at Lorne Station were spent talking to people, fossicking the heaps and generally lazying around.



On Friday night, Bob, with his dogs, Bundy the kelpie and Holly who is 17 years old, invited us over for dinner for porcupine rissoles. Tony and Dot joined us as well and we had a very enjoyable evening watching Bundy chase Bob's new pet, the lizard.




Since Sunday 15 June 2008 was my 45th birthday, Tony and Dot invited us over for a camp oven baked dinner. Again a big thank you to Tony, Dot and Bob for making us feel like we belonged somewhere. It was great meeting you guys and we will return one day.





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Trip 10 - Lightning Ridge

WORDS BY: Fina

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don

As per Ruth's suggestion, we arrived at the Lightning Ridge Caravan Park which is a council run caravan park and the cheapest in town. Pay 6 nights and get the 7th night free - 1 week for $96. As much as I loave caravan parks and prefer bush camping, it does give us the opportunity to do some supply shopping, catch up with the laundry and fill up the water tanks. The park is also central to everything in and around Lightning Ridge and walking distance to most shops, including the abundance of opal jewellery stores.

Lightning Ridge is the home of Australia's national gemstone and one of the few places in the world where the legendary Black Opal is found. A quirky mix of miners and tourists, Lightning ridge draws people from all over the world, especially ones who are hiding from ex-wives or the govenment, hince the question mark population sign.

On Monday it started to rain in Lightning Ridge. A local told us that it hasn't rained here since December. Seems like the rain is definitely following us on our travels. No matter where we have been so far, at some stage during our stay there it has always rain either 1 or 2 days.

The afternoon was spent driving around town as well as doing a couple of the self drive tours. The people of Lightning Ridge are well known for their ingenuity and creative solutions and nothing reflects these qualities better than the aptly named Car Door Tours! These quirky journeys are Lightning Ridge's answer to 'self drive' tours and are a great way to start your visit to The Ridge. Four tours are demarcated by colour coded and numbered car doors. Strung in trees and leaning in easily seen places, the car doors will lead you to some of the Ridge's greatest attractions. There are 4 in all - red, blue, green and yellow door tours which take you through the mining community's camps, mine shafts and tourist attractions. On this day we drove the red and green door tours.

The red door tour leads you to tourist attractions of Amigo's Castle and Astronomers' Monument. Amigo's Castle is a private home single-handedly built of ironstone. Started in 1981 and inspired by Roman ruins in northern Italy, near Amigo's birthplace. The scaffolding consisted of 44 gallon drums, with planks arranged one above the other. Underground there are trap doors, dungeons and tunnels incorporated as part of Amigo's mine. Entry to this site is only through one of the many mini bus tours so we gave it a miss.

The Astronomers' Monument is a curious concrete folly. It has a temple of inscriptions in memory of famous astronomers. There is no entry to this site but you can take photos of the monument from the road.

The green door tour specifically stated "dry weather only" and since it had been raining that morning, we thought the green door tour would be our next 4WD adventure. Unfortunately, we made it to the end of the tour without even engaging 4WD but it did lead us to the 1st mine shaft ever dug back in 1885.

On Tuesday, there was more rain in store for Lightning Ridge and surrounding areas. I noticed on the news last night that Brisbane, especially the Sunshine Coast, were really coping it with flooded roads and shopping centre carparks. Even Ann Street in Brisbane city was inpassable as it too was under water. I just hope that all our family and friends back in Brisbane are staying high and dry.

Tuesday morning was spent lazying around the camp site. The other tourists, who are in caravans, kept asking us if we were OK and dry. They seem to think that because the camper is mostly canvas that were wet inside. But in true style, the inside of the camper remained cozy and dry. Having picked up our mail yesterday from Lightning Ridge post office, during the rain we caught up on some reading, bill paying, website updates and generally played card games, watched DVD movies, played computer games, etc. A very relaxing morning all in all.

In the afternoon, we went to the Lightning Ridge artesian spa pool. This bore water comes from 1km underground and runs between 40 to 45 degrees. Quite a bit hotter than Burren Junction but still very nice for a soak. We continued on our car door tour by following the yellow door tour. This tour takes you to the Big Opal where you pay $15 each for a video, opal explanation and underground mine tour. There are 113 spiral steps to go down. That was the easy part! Climbing back up the 113 sprial steps was the hard part!

The next attraction on the yellow door tour is the Chamber of the Black Hand. The entry fee for this attraction is $25 each. On the first underground level you can see some spectacular sculptures and carvings in the sandstone walls as well as an underground coffee lounge and opal shop. I even bought a ring here and reduced him down from $195 to $140. I later got it valued by an independent valuer which said I did get a good deal. The sand sculptures range from Superman and Spiderman to the Golden Logie to the Statue of David. You are then guided down to the second level underground which takes you to a 105 year old mine with opal colours in the walls.

The yellow door tour continues on to Lunatic Hill and lookout which is an open cut mine. In 1986 an opal valued at $2.5 million named Halley's Comet was found here. Wouldn't it be nice to find another one like that again! I'm sure every miner in Grawin and Lightning Ridge are thinking exactly the same.

Wednesday was another lazy day around the caravan doing some domestic duties and rechecking the rocks we had collected at Grawin as well as updating this website.

On Thursday we went out to Lorne Station to visit Dot, an Aboriginal woman we had met at Grawin. Dot is a very amazing woman with fasinating stories and yarns. While on our visit there her husband, Tony showed us his opal collection. The photos don't really do any of the opals justice but it gives you a bit of an idea.

On Friday I found a couple of ticks on my left hip. As we weren't sure what exactly to do with them, I headed down to the local medical centre. A nurse saw me straight away and put some antiseptic honey on them with bandades. Apparantly, they should come off the next day and they did.

Friday afternoon came and we still had one more car door tour to do - the blue one. This tour took you through the Walk-in-Mine that offers self-guided tours down the opal mine. The mine is about 10 metres deep and has a very information video documentary after the tour. The cost of this was $10 each. I told Don that's it for opal tours!

Continuing on the blue car door tour took us to Bevan's Black Opal and Cactus Nursery which has over 2300 species of cactii, the largest collection in the Southern Hemisphere and the world's only opal mining cactus farmers! We didn't pay to enter this attraction but took photos from the road side instead and found a very interesting cactus! See if you can guess what it looks like?

We have booked and paid here at the council caravan park till Sunday however we are thinking of still staying in Lightning Ridge but transferring our camp to Lorne Station.

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Trip 09 - Grawin

WORDS BY: Fina
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don

We arrived at Grawin on Sunday 25 May 2008 after travelling through the towns of Come-By-Chance, Walgett and then Cumborah.

Grawin is an opal mining town - if you can call it a town! Lots of galvanised iron and tin sheds here - very primitive living. Some have electricity, some have solar panels and some just operate by candle or torch. I think our camper is more of a home than some of these tin shacks.

The days we spent at Grawin were mainly opal fossicking on the mullock heaps. This means lots of back breaking work either standing up and digging and scraping or sitting on the rocks digging and scraping. Mullock heaps are left overs from the mining claims where big dump trucks dump the left overs in heaps. One story goes that a lady found an opal, sold it to one of the locals for $2,000 and then he consequently sold it to someone else for $40,000. Not sure how true the story is! Even if you spent a life time here, you would still not get through the mounds of mullock heaps.

We found lots of potch opal which ranges from a light blue to a deep blue glassy stone without all the pretty sparkly bits through it. Not worth anything but still very pretty. The stuff you are looking for sparkles in the sun light with all different colours. The best one to find is a black opal with red sparkly bits in it. Apparantly worth a fortune. However, we have only found little bits of the sparkly bits and nothing worth cutting. Hopefully, we will find a descent piece of opal during our stay here. Not sure how long through, possibly a week or so.

The free camping spot is right next to the mullock heaps. Nothing here but bush camping at its best - no power, no toilets, no showers, no water. Nothing but corrugated dirt roads. Don even dug our first bush camping toilet. Now all he has to do is use it!

On Thursday, after 4 days of fossicking, I was over the digging and scraping and only getting bits of sparkle. So for the next 3 days, I spring cleaned the camper and cooked donuts and picklets for morning tea. Don, however, continued on fossicking for 7 days from dawn till dusk. In the end we collected a coffee jar full of sparkly bits.

Our friends, Ruth and Joe, whom we met at Burren Junction, joined us on Thursday for a couple of days. If you remember, Ruth was the one that shaved Don's hair and tinted mine.

Also, on Thursday afternoon, a mother and son arrived who were travelling in a Troopy from Weipa, Queensland to Perth, Western Australia. Yvonne and Tony are lovely people and we enjoyed the couple of days spent together.

During Friday, while the others continued on with their fossicking, I cleaned the bucketful of rock that Don and I had collected so far only to get half a coffee jar of good bits of opal. This task took up most of my day scraping, cutting and snipping the rock to get out the sparkly bits. I even ended up with blisters from the hammer and snipers.

That night was our first night of having a fire and we shared the fire with our new neighbours. Ruth made a beer damper which Joe was very upset with because she used his last can of beer!

Unfortunately, Don didn't sleep well Friday night as he woke up several times with a tooth ache so at some stage we may need to take a trip to the dentist. That is, if the drugs don't end up working!

On Saturday, our neighbours decided to stay another night and so did we. It is absolutely great camping here in the bush with no-one else in sight. No noise, bright stars and most of all, no generator noise. The nights are pitch black and the stars have a brillance I have not seen anywhere else. You get to see all of the milky way not just bits and pieces of it.

On Sunday 1 June 2008, we have officially been on the road for 2 months having left Brisbane on Monday 1 April 2008. As a milestone, we decided to leave Grawin and head to Lightning Ridge for possibly more opal fossicking and site seeing. Our friends, Ruth and Joe, Yvonne and Tony, were both heading in the opposite direction towards Bourke with a possible stop at Brewarrina.

Hope you are all enjoying our stories and website. Please leave us comments if you wish.

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Trip 08 - Pilliga

WORDS BY: Fina

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don

We decided to leave Baan Baa on Saturday and head back out further west of NSW. However, because of our big night at Baan Baa pub the night before, the drive was broken up with a stop for the night at Pilliga Bore. Again we stayed off the black tar by driving to Pilliga via Yarrie Lake and Cuttabri.

The picture of Yarrie Lake in the Camps Australia Wide book is lovely and shows water. However, when we arrive at Yarrie Lake a local told us that the lake has now been dry for over 2 years which unfortunately is now a hole in the ground with overgrown weeds and completely dry. Funny to see the fishing and boating signs still next to the lake.

The bore at Pilliga is a lot smaller than Burren Junction and runs about 5 degrees cooler however still nice for a soak and a free camp spot. The bore pool is undercover which creates more algae and slippery than Burren Junction.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we head to Grawin, where we hope to make our millions opal fossicking - yeh right!

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Trip 07 - Baan Baa

WORDS BY: Fina

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Don

Well the question from our last story, was did we turn left towards Lightening Ridge or right towards Mt Kaputar? Well, we actually turned right but we didn't end up at Mt Kaputar. Instead we ended up at a little country town called Baan Baa where we were going to celebrate George's birthday at the only commercial building in the town, a pub!

We camped behind the pub for free, had a wonderful meal at the pub, and drank and socialised with the locals. All in all the night was pleasant and enjoyable and it was good to see both Don and George happy. How old is George? Well, he actually wouldn't tell us. We still think he is Santa in disguise.

Since we only stayed one night at Baan Baa, it is only a short story this time.

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