Thurs, 23rd May, 2024 (morning) Coocoran Opalfield, Lightning Ridge to Lightning Ridge Rest Area, Castlereagh Highway, NSW (exploring Lightning Ridge)

10 degrees min this morning, clear sky and light breeze. Packed up and headed back into town. I thought this was old equipment as we drove in but now realise it is one of the sucker machines to bring the rocks and opals to the surface rather than the bucket thing the other chap was using.

We drove into the camp that claims to have a 3.7m opal tree - I think it was the tree out front but didn’t see any opals. Lots of interesting bits and pieces around the camp.

I had seen a Gem Garden on Wikicamps and found it beside the fossickers’ pile but it was locked up.

Continued along the main road and them turned off to follow the Yellow Door Tour.

The car doors are also used by ‘home’ owners to mark their leases etc.

Turned off at the Chambers of the Black Hand that we are booked into soon. Nearby is the site of the new building for the Opal Centre. Will have to come back when they eventually get it finished. 

Through the building site and around to Lunatic Hill. Lots of piles of rocks everywhere.

Walked to the mine lookout and read the information.

More information. I looked up more information about the opal called Halley’s Comet. It is in the Guinness Book of Records for being the largest uncut black opal nobby. It was found on 3 Nov, 1986, around the time Halley’s Comet was zooming across the sky, hence the name. Another amazing opal was found in 1938 and called Aurora Australis and is believed to the the world’s most valuable Black Opal.

Found some air vents feeding air down 20 metres below us. Amazing to think of mine shafts and tunnels that are under us at this spot.

Some of the ‘homes’ are very interesting.

Drove back to the Black Hand corner and followed the track through more mining areas. Piles everywhere.

The ‘tour’ continues back to the main highway so we turned around as we are doing the tour of the Black Hand mine shortly. Parked at the Chambers of the Black Hand - just a small area up top - must be huge down below us.

Chatted with the lady working there while we had a cuppa. She said the name was from the Black Hand on the tree where we turned on the tour - so everyone just said go to the mine near the Black Hand so the name stuck.

We chatted about the population here and she said the census doesn’t get the real number as there are so many ‘hiding’ out and then in the winter there are all the 6 month miners that arrive so they struggle to get enough resources as the money distributed doesn’t cover the real number of people using the facilities in the town. She said Ron Canlin had been searching for opal here since 1982 but no big payoffs arrived for him. He opened up the mine in 1997 to visitors to make some money. They had to climb down the ladder so he decided to cut some stairs into the sandstone layer. It took him 5 months to carve the 83 steps down the 18 metres to the chamber. As more people visited he decided to make the walls more interesting. He has spent a lot of time in air compression chambers in his previous job in the English Navy and learnt to carve. He started carving the sandstone with a butter knife and a new tourism venture appeared.

Other people arrived and we were given a map and a hard hat and the lady went through the safety protocols. Down the steps we went.

Into the sculpture section where our miner guide gave us the history of the mine and Ron’s creations - these were his first ones. Ron had to dig out the small mining tunnels to make them suitable for tourists to move around in. He has done am amazing job. We will come back and slowly walk around the sculptures and watch the videos.

Then we went down to the mining level where he explained about opal mining. A nice cool temperature (about 16 degrees) down here which was good in summer with the extreme heat they get and of course feels warmer than the outside in winter.

How those early miners coped being bent over in this narrow shafts waiting for the sound of their picks hitting the opal - gives a different sound, like tapping glass.

They would also dig in complete darkness - he turned off the lights to prove how dark! They would only use their candles when they heard the ‘sound’ but would then climb back up to the surface to properly check their ‘reward’. Also candles etc used oxygen which of course had to be preserved underground. They did have a few air vents to help with the oxygen levels of course.

We moved to one of the ballrooms - named because it is big enough to dance in!! As they are a bigger area they required more stablising so they used the plentiful cypress pine as supports. They would listen for creaks and if the top or bottom of the log start splitting to know if the roof was starting to collapse etc. Nowadays and because this is a tourist mine the walls are all covered with mess. He said that no one lives underground around here as it is too moist compared to Coober Pedy etc. A mining lease is for one year over a 50mx50m area whereas a residential lease is 25 years but things are changing in that department.

There are still a few bits of opal and potch exposed in the walls and ceiling. Black Opal is only found around here and nobbies are only found at Lightning Ridge - not over at Grawin area - why, they can’t explain it. Trying not to use my flash so some photos came out blurry. This is one of the old timer’s ways of getting the ore along the tunnels to where they could lift it up the shaft. The modern ways have made things a lot easier - even the digging is with machinery like this one. The pipe underneath shows how the vacuum method would work - scrape the rock out and it gets sucked up along the pipe and up the shaft to the waiting truck above like the one we saw yesterday. He said you could probably walk through tunnels all the way back into town as some of the mines reach the outer edges of their leases so the other person’s tunnel can be just through a bit of dirt. There was new bitumen put down on a road and it is now collapsing in places where they are ‘ballrooms’ etc under the ground which didn’t have support. There are no maps of the tunnels which go everywhere underground - maybe someone could make money by mapping them all!

Back through the tunnel and up the slope to the sculpture level. We thanked our guide and then were left to meander through the tunnels to admire all the amazing sculptures. I took so many photos but there were a lot of didn’t take photos of too. To think they were all carved with a bone handled butter knife and stainless steel wool to make the scraps etc. He has painted some and obviously the moisture they talked about is having an effect on the paint. Even a Black Hand.

The walls have lots of holes from jackhammer drilling too.

There was so much to see - even Superman was flying over us.

We went into the Dragon’s chamber to watch a video. It was of Ron and other miners telling their stories of opal hunting and their lives in Lightning Ridge. Very interesting that we sat for probably half an hour. The video hadn’t finished but we thought we had better keep moving.

The carvings continued.

Finally into the Showroom with a nice memorial seat and information about Ron, certainly an amazing story. There are lots of lovely opals and jewellery pieces to purchase too but I refrained! A few old relics hang from the wall and our guide showed us the actual knife or what is left of it and the fork he used to do the carvings.

We made our way back up the steps - so glad it wasn’t the straight ladder of the latter years.

We drove back into town for a very late lunch by the noodling area. We got out our hammers and broke a few open. Steve dug around the base of the tree and found a few little bits. No fabulous stone hiding here for us.