I have a strange fondness for quirky frontier towns. So when I first read about the eccentric opal mining community in Lightening Ridge, out in the desert of New South Wales, I knew I had to visit. We like...
I have a strange fondness for quirky frontier towns. So when I first read about the eccentric opal mining community in Lightening Ridge, out in the desert of New South Wales, I knew I had to visit. We like to take one or two road trips per year, so this became our Easter road trip destination.
Why Visit Lightening Ridge?
Lightening Ridge is an eccentric little town where you can get your fill of outback vibes, while still being reasonably close to civilization. I had not heard of Lightening Ridge until recently, and for years I have wanted to visit the opal mining center of Coober Pedy. However, being so remote, we would have to do a lot of organizing and spend a bit of time to get there. So when I learned that there was an opal mining town in the NSW outback, accessible from Sydney, I knew that we would have to visit.
If you want to learn about Opal mining, visit off the grid bush mining communities, and experience the outback and the desert, then Lightening Ridge is a destination you should definitely consider.
Where is Lightening Ridge?
Lightening Ridge is located in the New South Wales outback and isn’t particularly close to anything – but its not so far away as to be impossible to reach. It’s located 700 km’s from Sydney (about a 9 hour drive) or 730 km’s from Brisbane (about an 8 hour drive). It is possible to head there in a day, but there are lots of great places to visit on the way, so why not make a road trip of it?
What to do in Lightening Ridge
Lightening Ridge is all about opals and outback, as you will see from our following list of 6 reasons to visit Lightening Ridge.
Fossick for Opals
To ‘fossick’ means to search, and the word is most commonly used in the context of searching for something precious in the ground. But first, what are opals? An opal is a precious gemstone formed from silica. It’s shiny and can be full of different colours, or even sort of pearl like. Lightening Ridge is the only place in the world where you can find black opals. Black opals is where the silica gemstone has adhered itself to a black substance as its base. I asked a few people in Lightening Ridge why those kinds of opals are only found here, and no one really had a definitive answer.
Fossicking for opals is actually pretty easy. You don’t need any special equipment, just dig through some dirt. There are a few places around town where they have dug up great piles of dirt where you can have a go searching for opals. We didn’t find any, but we also didn’t apply ourselves that hard either.
Car Door Tours
The best way to great a great feel for the lay of the land is by doing on the car door tours. These are little mini driving tours where you essentially follow a trail of numbered car doors through the outback landscape to different points of interest. You can get a self driving tour guide from the tourist information office for a gold coin donation. There are several car door tours and we did a couple of them. They definitely help you to get a little off the beaten path and let you discover another facet of this interesting little town.
Visit a Mine
There are a couple different walk in mines in town where you can descend into an old mine to see what the work would have been like for the early miners. While it was interesting, there wasn’t much information (and it was self guided) so we left feeling like we hadn’t really taken in all that much. If you want to visit a mine I would recommend one where you have a guide who can tell you some stories and really bring the place to life.
Bush pubs in the middle of nowhere
Have you ever gone on a pub crawl in the middle of nowhere? Well about 70km’s from Lightening Ridge, in the middle of the mining camps, are three extremely unique bush pubs. The club in the scrub, the Glengarry Hilton, and the Sheepyard Inn. Your GPS may not be able to tell you how to get there, but the tourist information office in Lightening Ridge can give you directions. You will need to do a bit of off roading to get to these pubs, but while rough, the roads are fairly decent, and we did it in a Peugeot station wagon.
This whole area is incredibly interesting to visit. Here you will find real active mining camps (just be careful if walking around as there may be unmarked mining pits).
Enjoy the desert sunsets
Sunsets in the desert just seem to be more epic than anywhere else, and I’m not sure why. Maybe its because the flat landscape with no trees just gives you more sky to look at. Either way, there is a car door tour which will take you to the best place in Lightening Ridge to watch the sunset.
Artesian Bore Baths
The water in the Artesian Bore Baths is said to be approximately two million years old, and is forced into the baths due to great pressure from the Great Artesian Basin. The water maintains a natural temperature of about 40 – 50 degrees celcius, and entry to the baths is free.
Where to stay in Lightening Ridge
Lightening Ridge is a small town, but despite that, there are quite a few options regarding accommodation, from hotels to motels to camping grounds. We had all of our camping gear with us so we stayed at one of the two local camp grounds. You can read on more great things to do on a camping trip on campingfunzone.com!
