Bourke & Beyond - Day 2
Sep. 29th, 2020 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanNarrabri to Lightning Ridge
A lesser travelled day, overall, but it certainly felt like more than just 340 kms
Breakfast at the 2nd local cafe we found, then to a pharmacy for essentials & a lottery agency for some wishful thinking, before heading back out to the Australia Telescope Compact Array about 15 kms out of town. We’ve been there before, but being mild science nerds, it’s always worth the trip. With the sun on the ‘right’ side of the dishes in the morning, it was easier to get shots of the 5 close dishes all together (the 6th is fixed at a point some 5 kms away from the others). A little science reading in the Visitors Centre, then testing out the in-line acoustic dishes, which are set about 50m apart & if you face the dish & speak, the person at the other one can hear you clearly. Be careful what you call your partner - they can hear you!!
And so, on to Lightning Ridge, via whatever we find along the way. We decided to try out Laura’s on-board mapping system again & she directed us down a red dirt road for a few kilometres, before getting her wires crossed & sending us in a couple of circles around a rail siding, before we figured out the way to Walgett ourselves. We got a little ambitious & added in the town of Come By Chance, simply because who can resist a name like that. After a bit (okay, quite a bit) of prevarication on Laura’s part, we found the right way there, thanks, in no small part, to the little town of Burren Junction. Now, I'd never heard of the place, but once upon a time it seems to have been the Grand Central station of Australian travel & freight, if the sign outside town is to be believed... You can get anywhere from there
Funny that Come By Chance isn't mentioned on there, but it certainly helped our bearings. For all its past glory as a transport hub, it's pretty isolated out there & the landscape is an Australian cliché... you know the one
We soon left the black top behind, for some narrow dirt roads & only had one unscheduled stop due to an oncoming road train, who was about the width of the entire road... The driver seemed quite pleased we hadn’t panicked at his approach & had calmly got off the road while he was still about half a kilometre away. We got a wave as he thundered past at some impressive rate of knots, anyway... I'm still not sure how he'd got through the narrow gate we passed a few hundred metres down the road... it still looked intact
Not long after that, we disturbed some small birds by the roadside & unfortunately one of them will never be disturbed again - our windscreen was the shock of his life. L-SP was pretty shocked too - it hit on her side & she had visions of broken glass & a dead bird in her lap. Fortunately, Laura is made of tougher stuff. Well... not so fortunate for the bird, but...
After these encounters, we finally made it to what Laura called ‘Come By Chance Park’ which was a few hundred metres down another dirt road & was indistinguishable from the surrounding scrub & red dirt we’d been driving past for some time. Certainly didn’t look like anyone had been playing football or cricket there for a while... or ever. Either the park didn’t exist, or Laura had no idea where we were. I could see what looked like a small town a few hundred metres away, so abandoning Laura’s navigational conniptions, we found the right road &...
... really needn’t have bothered. The ‘town’ such as it was, was a few old & older buildings in various states of collapse & all seemed to be closed to visitors, whether they’d come by chance, or by dogged determination like we had. Oh well, at least we’d got some dirt on the tyres... windows, interior... & got a whole lot more when some white Toyota thing decided that 85kmh on a dirt road wasn’t fast enough for him & overtook us, leaving us literally in his dust, which totally obscured my view of the road, the side of the road... hell, even the sky!! Everything went white for about 20 seconds & I hit the brakes as we both coughed & swore at the rapidly dwindling shape of the arsehole as he disappeared in the fore-distance
Not long after that, L-SP got her wish of seeing a real Goanna, as it raced across the road in front of us, being chased by an angry magpie. Everybody is scared of Australian snakes, spiders & lizards, but don’t mess with our birds either... especially in nesting season!!
Walgett, when the dust had cleared & we could see the road, seemed a nice little town. Certainly the lady in the Visitors Centre was very helpful & happy, especially when warning us there was rain forecast for the north-western corner of New South Wales, which may put our planned route to Cameron’s Corner in jeopardy. We decided to press on regardless & adapt as we go, hoping we don’t have to. Cameron's Corner is where New South Wales meets both the Queensland & South Australia borders & we just wanted to be able to put a foot into both of those States, so we could say we've been interstate at a time when all the Covid19 restrictions mean that actual interstate travel is, if not actually banned, extremely problematic, as it involves a 2 week quarantine stay in a hotel, at your own expense, before you're allowed to go anywhere
The Corner is not really a major thoroughfare for interstate travel, as the dirt roads preclude most traffic &, if the expected rain hits, the roads will doubtless be closed. It can be an expensive exercise getting bogged out there - especially when the road's officially closed. You are charged $1000 per wheel that needs to be dug out, you pay for any damage you've done to the road & then there's the cost of getting the tow team out to you & the fee for dragging your recalcitrant arse back to the nearest town, which is Tibooburra - about 200 kilometres away. Not something we've budgeted for...
From Walgett, it's only a short trip down the highway to Lightning Ridge - the Opal Capital of Australia & boy, do they like to let you know!! From the moment you hit the 5 kilometre mark outside town, there’s nothing but roadside signs for opal mines, traders & tours. We found the Visitors Centre on the way into town &, again, the staff were friendly & helpful, recommending drive-yourself tours & various places. Given we’re here for 2 nights, it’s a good bet we’ll get to most of them. The drive-yourself tours are named after various coloured car doors. There’s a blue one, a yellow one, a red one... & the green one is the best to do at sunset, so, given it was about 4pm, we thought we’d start there. I’d noticed a sign for a green car door tour on the way into town & wondered what the hell that meant... now I know. It means about 20 minutes on a red dirt road full of ruts & potholes past & through small opal mine ‘claims’ which make the landscape look like a rabbit warren gone into overdrive, or a bit like the eastern end of the South Dakota Badlands, where the prairie dogs have holes everywhere... if the prairie dogs were the size of a young bison
This was our first real encounter with the Red Centre of Australia in quite a few years & it felt good to know we were really out there & a long way from home. It’s a wonderfully liberating feeling
One that is apparently shared by a significant amount of Grey Nomad tourists, who seemed to converge on the end point of the trail, where the sunset view is written to be the best in town. We went from being pretty much alone, to waving away SUVs like the persistent flies all around. Fortunately, the view over the plains & the historic mine sites were quite interesting, even if the more recent addition of a ‘labyrinth’ made of small rocks arranged in concentric circles was not - though it certainly caught the attention of the increasing throng. Sunset, when it arrived, was nice, but not amazing... & certainly not improved by the soundtrack provided by one of the nearby SUVs pumping out an 80s power ballad, nor by the drone launched by another couple, which flew into my shots a couple of times. If there had been a suitable sized rock near to hand...
Back into town & more trouble with Laura’s navigation system. All we wanted was directions to a suitable restaurant. After a few U-turns & confusion, we headed for the town’s Bowling Club. It is something of an Australian country town tradition that, if there is a Bowling Club, it will have a Chinese restaurant in it - even if there's another Chinese restaurant elsewhere in the town. Lightning Ridge's club advertised ‘Lucky’s Brasserie’ which surely couldn’t be the local Chinese joint with a name like that, could it?
Yes. Yes it could... so far, so traditional. But it also did ‘Western Meals’ which were everything from steaks, fish & chips & a mixed grill of sirloin, chicken , bacon & egg, with chips & gravy, which my stomach cried out to
We plan to do the other coloured car door tours tomorrow & may, or may not, wind up down at least 1 opal mine. Who knows??
Kilometres travelled: 340 - though it felt like more...
A lesser travelled day, overall, but it certainly felt like more than just 340 kms
Breakfast at the 2nd local cafe we found, then to a pharmacy for essentials & a lottery agency for some wishful thinking, before heading back out to the Australia Telescope Compact Array about 15 kms out of town. We’ve been there before, but being mild science nerds, it’s always worth the trip. With the sun on the ‘right’ side of the dishes in the morning, it was easier to get shots of the 5 close dishes all together (the 6th is fixed at a point some 5 kms away from the others). A little science reading in the Visitors Centre, then testing out the in-line acoustic dishes, which are set about 50m apart & if you face the dish & speak, the person at the other one can hear you clearly. Be careful what you call your partner - they can hear you!!
And so, on to Lightning Ridge, via whatever we find along the way. We decided to try out Laura’s on-board mapping system again & she directed us down a red dirt road for a few kilometres, before getting her wires crossed & sending us in a couple of circles around a rail siding, before we figured out the way to Walgett ourselves. We got a little ambitious & added in the town of Come By Chance, simply because who can resist a name like that. After a bit (okay, quite a bit) of prevarication on Laura’s part, we found the right way there, thanks, in no small part, to the little town of Burren Junction. Now, I'd never heard of the place, but once upon a time it seems to have been the Grand Central station of Australian travel & freight, if the sign outside town is to be believed... You can get anywhere from there
Funny that Come By Chance isn't mentioned on there, but it certainly helped our bearings. For all its past glory as a transport hub, it's pretty isolated out there & the landscape is an Australian cliché... you know the one
We soon left the black top behind, for some narrow dirt roads & only had one unscheduled stop due to an oncoming road train, who was about the width of the entire road... The driver seemed quite pleased we hadn’t panicked at his approach & had calmly got off the road while he was still about half a kilometre away. We got a wave as he thundered past at some impressive rate of knots, anyway... I'm still not sure how he'd got through the narrow gate we passed a few hundred metres down the road... it still looked intact
Not long after that, we disturbed some small birds by the roadside & unfortunately one of them will never be disturbed again - our windscreen was the shock of his life. L-SP was pretty shocked too - it hit on her side & she had visions of broken glass & a dead bird in her lap. Fortunately, Laura is made of tougher stuff. Well... not so fortunate for the bird, but...
After these encounters, we finally made it to what Laura called ‘Come By Chance Park’ which was a few hundred metres down another dirt road & was indistinguishable from the surrounding scrub & red dirt we’d been driving past for some time. Certainly didn’t look like anyone had been playing football or cricket there for a while... or ever. Either the park didn’t exist, or Laura had no idea where we were. I could see what looked like a small town a few hundred metres away, so abandoning Laura’s navigational conniptions, we found the right road &...
... really needn’t have bothered. The ‘town’ such as it was, was a few old & older buildings in various states of collapse & all seemed to be closed to visitors, whether they’d come by chance, or by dogged determination like we had. Oh well, at least we’d got some dirt on the tyres... windows, interior... & got a whole lot more when some white Toyota thing decided that 85kmh on a dirt road wasn’t fast enough for him & overtook us, leaving us literally in his dust, which totally obscured my view of the road, the side of the road... hell, even the sky!! Everything went white for about 20 seconds & I hit the brakes as we both coughed & swore at the rapidly dwindling shape of the arsehole as he disappeared in the fore-distance
Not long after that, L-SP got her wish of seeing a real Goanna, as it raced across the road in front of us, being chased by an angry magpie. Everybody is scared of Australian snakes, spiders & lizards, but don’t mess with our birds either... especially in nesting season!!
Walgett, when the dust had cleared & we could see the road, seemed a nice little town. Certainly the lady in the Visitors Centre was very helpful & happy, especially when warning us there was rain forecast for the north-western corner of New South Wales, which may put our planned route to Cameron’s Corner in jeopardy. We decided to press on regardless & adapt as we go, hoping we don’t have to. Cameron's Corner is where New South Wales meets both the Queensland & South Australia borders & we just wanted to be able to put a foot into both of those States, so we could say we've been interstate at a time when all the Covid19 restrictions mean that actual interstate travel is, if not actually banned, extremely problematic, as it involves a 2 week quarantine stay in a hotel, at your own expense, before you're allowed to go anywhere
The Corner is not really a major thoroughfare for interstate travel, as the dirt roads preclude most traffic &, if the expected rain hits, the roads will doubtless be closed. It can be an expensive exercise getting bogged out there - especially when the road's officially closed. You are charged $1000 per wheel that needs to be dug out, you pay for any damage you've done to the road & then there's the cost of getting the tow team out to you & the fee for dragging your recalcitrant arse back to the nearest town, which is Tibooburra - about 200 kilometres away. Not something we've budgeted for...
From Walgett, it's only a short trip down the highway to Lightning Ridge - the Opal Capital of Australia & boy, do they like to let you know!! From the moment you hit the 5 kilometre mark outside town, there’s nothing but roadside signs for opal mines, traders & tours. We found the Visitors Centre on the way into town &, again, the staff were friendly & helpful, recommending drive-yourself tours & various places. Given we’re here for 2 nights, it’s a good bet we’ll get to most of them. The drive-yourself tours are named after various coloured car doors. There’s a blue one, a yellow one, a red one... & the green one is the best to do at sunset, so, given it was about 4pm, we thought we’d start there. I’d noticed a sign for a green car door tour on the way into town & wondered what the hell that meant... now I know. It means about 20 minutes on a red dirt road full of ruts & potholes past & through small opal mine ‘claims’ which make the landscape look like a rabbit warren gone into overdrive, or a bit like the eastern end of the South Dakota Badlands, where the prairie dogs have holes everywhere... if the prairie dogs were the size of a young bison
This was our first real encounter with the Red Centre of Australia in quite a few years & it felt good to know we were really out there & a long way from home. It’s a wonderfully liberating feeling
One that is apparently shared by a significant amount of Grey Nomad tourists, who seemed to converge on the end point of the trail, where the sunset view is written to be the best in town. We went from being pretty much alone, to waving away SUVs like the persistent flies all around. Fortunately, the view over the plains & the historic mine sites were quite interesting, even if the more recent addition of a ‘labyrinth’ made of small rocks arranged in concentric circles was not - though it certainly caught the attention of the increasing throng. Sunset, when it arrived, was nice, but not amazing... & certainly not improved by the soundtrack provided by one of the nearby SUVs pumping out an 80s power ballad, nor by the drone launched by another couple, which flew into my shots a couple of times. If there had been a suitable sized rock near to hand...
Back into town & more trouble with Laura’s navigation system. All we wanted was directions to a suitable restaurant. After a few U-turns & confusion, we headed for the town’s Bowling Club. It is something of an Australian country town tradition that, if there is a Bowling Club, it will have a Chinese restaurant in it - even if there's another Chinese restaurant elsewhere in the town. Lightning Ridge's club advertised ‘Lucky’s Brasserie’ which surely couldn’t be the local Chinese joint with a name like that, could it?
Yes. Yes it could... so far, so traditional. But it also did ‘Western Meals’ which were everything from steaks, fish & chips & a mixed grill of sirloin, chicken , bacon & egg, with chips & gravy, which my stomach cried out to
We plan to do the other coloured car door tours tomorrow & may, or may not, wind up down at least 1 opal mine. Who knows??
Kilometres travelled: 340 - though it felt like more...
