Lightning (Ridge) strikes twice

Bird of the Day:  Crested Bellbird.  Variegated Fairy Wren also gets a look.  No large flocks of anything.

Plant of the Day: Bimble Box (Eucalyptus ??) - an archetypal tree of this area.

Scene of the Day:  Lunatic Hill open cut would be a winner against most competition.

Art of the day:  Decorations on, and around, shearing shed at Lorne Station.  Other contenders were:

a mural near the Lightning Ridage Visitors Centre; and the John Murray Art Gallery in Lightning Ridge.  All of his work showed great draughtsmanship, good composition, empathy with the subject matter; and a damn fine sense of humour.

Typically Australian thing of the day: A War memorial!  Lightning Ridge is not typically Australian so other contenders were  hard to find!

Maximum Temperature  19 Minimum temperature -1

Distance traveled  with camper  0 without camper 30

Despite the TV noise from the next van we got a reasonable nights sleep.  I have just realised that I haven't mentioned the main reason for Lightning Ridge's existence, which is opal mining.  As well as big operations and small scale commercial mines, a popular tourist occupation is fossicking the mullock (ie spoil) heaps generated by the other operations.  Our campsite (Lorne Station) has a large mullock heap - the pink, mesa-looking heap in this image - which we are welcome to investigate.

We visited the heap on our morning walk with Tammy and I at least concluded attempting to fossick without any idea how to go about it, nor indeed what we were looking for was likely to be a royal waste of time.

A problem which arose during the walk was Hudson's Pear.  This is an invasive cactus of a particularly fiendish nature.  I found it got through my runners and into my foot easily and Tammy was attacked three times - it seemed to have hooked spines that needed a good yank to get out.  (This was rather painful for Tammy who tolerates bindi removal with little reaction but snapped at this process.)

The tufts of cactus are easily seen in this image.  It is such a problem that the Miners Association provides free spray to deal with it.  However the labour involved in cleaning this property would be huge (and I get the impression from the linked DPI paper  that there are many others in a similar situation).  Bring on the biological control!.

This shot from the top of the mullock heap suggest the area is generally MBF.

A flower - can't remember of what!

This is the shearnig shed at Lorne.  It appears to hav ehad a second life of an artistic nature.

We were initially worried when this bunch turned up as they were seen to carry a guitar into their cottage.  Thoughts of campfire sing-a-longs came through our minds.  However they were very sociably quiet.  (The yellow blobs are obfuscating face recognition, not an attack by Hudson's Pear or killer Tennis Balls.)

Following a suggestion about birds by the owner of the Station we ended up finding a pair of Crested Bellbirds.  This is the male.

This is a mural at the Visitors Centre depicting events around the place.

They also has a posing site, and knowing that Frances doesn't like such things I asked her to photograph myself and Tammy doing the business.

Yesterday I referred to seeing a couple of cyclists on the road from Walgett.  This morning we met them sitting outside the Visitors Centre.  When asked where they had ridden from the answer was "the UK".  They had ridden right across - via Kazakhstan - Asia and down to Malaysia whence to Perth.  Crossing the Nullabor had taken 10 days.  They are heading to Brisbane and then cross to NZ for a few weeks before flying back to England.

This is the Ridge War Memorial.

Rather like the adverts for Lorne Station the Chamber of Commerce has set up a series of tours following numbered and coloured car doors.  We started off with the Yellow tour.

Although in the middle of the town we came across this 'roo wandering around,

A reasonably typically house, built out of local stone.

We found a walk as part of the tour with some labelled plants, at least in the earlier part.  This is the fruit of an Exocarpos - E. aphyllus reflecting the situation that it has even less leaf material than other members of the genus!  (The common ACT species of Exocarpos is called a Native Cherry, as the fruit resembles a small cherry - this is more like the Native Castration Band.)

Old mine shafts were everywhere, with various devices to save tourists from their own daftness.

There were many Caper White butterflies around and I eventually got one of them to pause for a photo.

Some donors to the car door supply.

Conventional prickly pears are also found here, as are more double decker buses!

This is the Lunatic Ridge open cut opal mine.  Some tunnels were also driven in at the lower levels.

Click on this image for some helpful information.

This says, and/or depicts, it all.

A nicely decorated house ...

.. and what is denoted as the Astonomers Memorial.  One has to pay to enter (but as it was closed that wasn't an option even if we wanted to).

Back at the campsite we noticed a bunch of rustic types turn up and go into the cottages.  They were fine, quietly talking around the fire pit.  A nice family group were much more noisy , with the very excited nice young gel shouting her excitement all over the place until late in the evening.  

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