Lightning Ridge Part Two

When they mine for opals, they basically pull the entire layer out where the opals are found, roll it around with water in a cement mixer for a few days, and eventually have a look through it. What's left after they look through everything is called the tailings.

At the Walk In Mine they let people look through the tailings for "treasure". We figured the experience could not be complete without spending some time fossicking so we took the few tools and spray bottles we'd got earlier in the day, and got to it.

It's not easy to find opal material or so we found out. I think we'd looked for an hour with zero success before I finally spotted something. I think the jury is out on whether or not this was a good thing or not because we all became invigorated to keep on searching. Not a problem except that at some point during the first hour it had started lightly raining. At first the sprinkles were nothing more than a very minor annoyance, but somewhere along the way, the tailings dirt started to cling to our shoes, tools, and the bottoms of the spray bottles.

We found more opal specks, but eventually started finding that we were getting awfully wet and quite muddy. The wet finally won out and we opal-miner-wanna-be types had to throw in the towel (heaven knows we'd have been wiping, not throwing, if only we'd had a towel).

We had the great privilege of being there for their overnight rainstorm. It was darn wet that next morning as we took off for home.

I figured the trip home was going to be my opportunity to see some emus and take some great photographs of them. With this goal in mind, off we went, and it wasn't long before I was demanding we stop. What we didn't know was how soft things were from the rain and that going on to the shoulder of the road or a driveway isn't a good idea after all that rain. We were suddenly very thankful we have an all-wheel drive vehicle because we were slip-slidin' away. Yikes!

We finally got turned around to get back to the emus, but we found out that non-zoo emus are extremely skittish. Nearly every picture I got was of their backside. All we had to do was slow the engine down and they started leaving. We did get to see an emu family with about three or four young-ins. I didn't manage to get a picture of that because they were even more skittish than skittish (ultra-skittish?), but man it was way cute!

The rest of the drive back was pretty uneventful except for Eric realizing at one point there was a turtle in the middle of the road. He missed it, but we were aghast to realize it was only halfway across. Hope he hurried. Um, turtle, guess that's a no. Well maybe it was his lucky day and everyone who passed by later missed him, too.

Eric left today for a month back home. I guess that means the major sightseeing is on hold for a bit. In the meantime I'll have to see if I can stay out of trouble until he gets back.