Heading To The Black Opal Capital Of Australia

Rockhopper here. Let's leave the Pillica region behind and head farther into the outback to a place known for its opals. I was leaving the Pillica region and the issues associated with it behind and the next town I was to pass through was the farming town of Narrabri. This is Narrabri. Looks like a little farm town of sorts. This is the downtown area. Narrabri, population about 5,500, is indeed a farming town, a cotton growing center, and also produces wheat, beef, and lamb. Welcome to Weehaw. Yeehaw. Yeehaw, we're in Weehaw. Little tiny town. I think everything's probably closed. It's after six. Looks like Weehaw is a cotton growing area. Indeed it is, and it's thought of as Australia's cotton capital and is located in the rich agricultural heartland of Lower Nemoy Valley in northwest New South Wales. One nice potential camping option could be the Pillica hot boar. There's some parking back there. I'll park for the night here and you can come and swim in the pool. It's supposedly 38 to 37 degrees depending on which part of the pool you're in, so pretty relaxing soak if you're into that kind of thing. I got off the main highway and headed a short way down to a town called Burren Junction. It seemed like a town that was slowly fading away. Sometimes the outback towns have wide streets for almost no traffic. Here in Burren Junction they have some sort of bicycle theme going on. Interesting touches in the outback like this tree. Dead tree, painted blue. About 20 k's beyond Burren Junction this is what the scenery looked like. Massive farms out there. The railroad town of Cryon. Like Burren Junction, Cryon seemed to have once experienced better days in the past and now looked to be succumbing to the elements. The vegetation becomes more sparse heading west. The farms out here spread far and wide and they seem to be of a massive scale. This is one of them and it just seems to go on for a long long way. As you can see looking out there, very big, very large acreages here. It's very hot, about 100 degrees Fahrenheit which is about 38 Celsius and there are a lot of flies out here and a lot of mosquitoes at night. And it's a very big wide open road. Seems like you can see forever. That's my first emu and he's walking around in a farm field. Not where I expected to see one but hey at least I'm seeing one and I can show it to you. Hey he's watching me. The emu is Australia's biggest bird. Standing up to two meters tall, that's six feet, and weighing up to 60 kilograms, 130 pounds, making it the world's second largest bird species after the ostrich. These flightless shaggy feathered avians are playful and known for their speed reaching up to 50 kilometers an hour or 30 miles per hour. The scenery is starting to become what people think of when they imagine the outback. Looks like maybe this was someone's living quarters at one time. Not much left in here now however. Looks like there's an old bed there. It looks like it's a fairly old structure, maybe 70, 80 years old, not really sure. And it's probably been a long time since somebody had a sip of that whiskey. Quite an old stove back there, cooking stove, and some old tires. Holding down the corner there. An old lock from when there was once a door right there. Let's go inside what appears to be an old wool shed and have a look. I've just come into the old wool shed and you can see what used to power the clippers. Here's where the shearers used to be and these wheels up here would turn and power the clippers which would be down here for the shearers. So I don't know how old these things are but they could be kind of old. Looks like this shed's been here for quite some time. I'll give you a bit of a view from back here a little more. This would be the wool compressor there. You put the wool in and then you just pull down and compress all that wool that's stuffed in there and put it in sacks, ship it. That's what I think it must be anyway. If I'm wrong let me know. It's been a while since I've been down under. It can be a long way from one town to the next and petrol stops can be few and far between. That's a pretty old building, 1913. Life can be so good. Live it. It can be difficult to find free showers in the states but out here in Australia I haven't had too much trouble. Found some at the Pillow Gabor and also here's some right at the showgrounds in Walgett. This is Walgett, a little town sort of at the outback I guess you would say. The aboriginal meaning of Walgett is meeting of two waters as the town is located by the junction of the Namoy and Barwon rivers. Walgett is thought of as the gateway to the opal fields and the outback. About 1400 people reside here and I noticed a fair amount of aboriginal people as I walked through town. Oops! Because the layout of the car is opposite of what I'm used to, sometimes when I want to make a right-hand turn I turn on the windscreen wipers. Because it's so hot I often took the opportunity to jump in rivers for a few minutes to cool off. Looks like horses have the right of way. Heading to Lightning Ridge from Walgett. Check it out, more emus. Getting into opal country. I'm here at a rest area at the side of the road and you can see a little bit of history here. Here's a little more about Lightning Ridge and how it got its name. I've seen some emus today but this is the weirdest one yet. This one's called Stanley and it's built out of old Volkswagen bugs and a little satellite dish or two. Here's a little information on Stanley if you want to pause it and read it. Well this is interesting. Lightning Ridge. On each side of the road a sign. There's also this. I'm wondering how touristy this place is going to be or what. All this stuff out here. Welcome to Lightning Ridge. It looks like it's just a small kind of touristy town based on opals. It's got some artwork to the left there. Fun stuff. Little places to shop and eat and stay. Yeah, doesn't look like a whole lot though. Interesting accommodations there. Look at the solar panels on that roof. Wouldn't mind hanging out there and checking it out. Looks pretty interesting. That's kind of funny. If you look who's on the door. High Plains Drifter and a couple of roos. There's a closer view of an emu. Wallaby at the waterhole having a drink. It's been a hot one out here. 100 degrees. Maybe a little over. I'm watching a kangaroo while I'm listening to one of my songs that I wrote. He keeps coming closer like he wants to hear the song. That's a buff looking roo there. The sun's a little harsh on the signs out this way. On occasion there are places where you could probably just bush camp and I don't think anybody'd really care. Like this place which is a former mining area just outside of the town of Lightning Ridge. Another place you can park it for the night is right here at the hot boar. Lightning Ridge. Park it in the back over the side and come in here and use the pool. However, it is a pretty hot pool. It's 41 degrees a little over. I think that's about 105 maybe in Fahrenheit. I'm not really sure on that one. I might have to check. It's got toilets. It's got outdoor showers and indoor showers in there if you like. There's also free showers at the Lightning Ridge Visitor's Center and that's the Visitor's Center right over there. You can go in there and get brochures or whatever you need and information for your trip. They call this the Astronomer's Monument. I'm not sure if it's like a little money-making scheme that somebody tried to do but here it is in Lightning Ridge. Also in Lightning Ridge is what they call the castle and it does kind of look like a castle doesn't it? Built out of stone and whatever else. Lightning Ridge has a historical society and behind it it has the old cottage hospital. Let's have a look inside the window of the old cottage hospital. Dispensary. As soon as I saw that sign my mind went to cannabis. How about you guys? This is Sue and she's going to explain to us a bit about opals. Tell us about it. So this is from all opal from Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, Australia. The area is renowned for black opal and these are the black opals, these dark stones. You can see the body tone is very dark down here as well. These ones here are what we call light opals. You can see they're a softer, more pastel shade. They're still found in this area but they also find these in Coober Pedy and White Cliffs which is also in Australia. And then we also find in this area, we find crystal opals which are see-through which are these. A little bit hard to see the translucency here because it's a very thick stone. This is also a crystal opal and these little ones here. So they're all from the ridge but again the crystal opals are also found in Coober Pedy and White Cliffs along with the milky opal. But it's the black opal which we're famous for in this region. We find it in abundance here. All right, well thank you for explaining that a bit and it doesn't necessarily have to be a black opal to be a black opal. No, it can be any colour. In fact, if you just pick up through here. Yes, so these trays we have here, this one as well, they're all black opals. They're all what we call solid precious black opals. They can be any colour at all, red being the most rare of the colours, this blood red. So when you get into your, coming back to this tray, this milky opal here, you can see it's got red in it but it's more orangey pink sort of tones. Whereas the traditional black opal has more fire to it, a real blood red. And then the other thing is the shape. That's what we talked about earlier, the shape. So they use a Dremel tool to do these odd shapes, Dremel being like a dentist drill, which what they're doing is allowing, they're removing the clay stone, the host rock and really retaining the natural formation that the opal's sitting in, which is beautiful. You're maximizing the yield but you're also ending up with this gorgeous natural shaped stone, which is lovely. Yeah, they're beautiful. They're very beautiful and you can make some really beautiful jewellery designs with those as well. I think that's a pretty one there, have a closer look. So keep your eyes out, you might find an opal out there on the Anything that looks like glass, pick it up around Dighton Ridge if you're fossicking because it more than likely is going to be opal that you're finding. And then the potch as well, so just coming back to this piece here. This is what we call potch, which is common opal. It's opal that doesn't have a rainbow colour to it. It's not very valuable but it's all part of the story, which is what I always say. So when you have your black opals, you have basically dark grey or black potch naturally forming with any beautiful rainbow coloured opal. And it's the black potch underneath or around the colour, you can actually see a lot of the potch on the face of these under these cool stones. So it's the black potch that's making the colours more intense. It's all about opals here in Lightning Ridge, that's for sure. Everything opals, opals, opals, it has black opals. This is the size of a saltwater crocodile. That's pretty much life size right there, big fella. Lightning Ridge is quirky and fun and at this time of year, very hot. Travel safe everyone and have a good time out there. I hope you enjoyed having a look around Lightning Ridge and learning a thing or two about opals. Don't forget to give me a like the video, share and subscribe. Until next time, this is the Rock Hopper, I'll see ya.