Lightning Ridge

Since commencing our Darling River Run we had towed the caravan over more than 600km of dusty and at times corrugated dirt roads. Following our visit to Grawin and the NSW Opal Fields we were at the end of our predominantly dirt road travels for a while and everything - us, the car and the caravan included, were all in need of a good wash down.

A quick look at the map showed that only 75km away was the town of Lightning Ridge which just happens to have a public Artesian Bore Bath!  Nothing like a relaxing hot tub to soak in and really wash off some of the accumulated dirt.  As soon as we saw the bore baths were located just a couple of hundred metres from a caravan park we decided we were off to Lightning Ridge!

Lightning Ridge is the unofficial ‘capital’ of the Opal Fields and has all of the services to be expected in a small town (fuel, groceries, post office, etc.).  The town is also the home to a well-known and successful local artist (paintings and sculpture), John Murray.  You may recall a couple of humorous pictures from previous posts (bouncing car towing caravan over rough roads, emu’s eye view of oncoming car & caravan).  I like them so have included them again in this post (see below).

We thought of ourselves when we saw this picture

Once again - thinking of our own journey and our Emu near miss when we saw this picture

One of his larger creations is an 18m (60ft) high sculpture of an emu named ‘Stanley’ that unexpectedly greeted us on the highway 11km out of town.

Heather standing beneath 'Stanley'

Stanley has structural steel columns for his legs and neck, a body made from a rusted old Volkswagen Beetle and his head is comprised of a VW Beetle hood for a beak and two old satellite dishes for eyes!  We had come across plenty of emus on and alongside the road during our journey but Stanley was definitely the biggest.  At least he wasn’t going to run across the road in front of us!

The town of Lightning Ridge is working hard to entertain tourists that visit the place with 4 ‘Car Door Tours’ that you can self-drive.  These are known as the ‘Green’, ‘Red’, ‘Yellow’ and ‘Blue’ Car Door Tours.  Get a map from the tourist information centre and then follow each of the different routes which are clearly marked using car doors painted in the appropriate colour strategically placed along the way.  It is an easy way to see the various points of interest and unique attractions in and around the town.

Our day concluded with a long-awaited visit to the Artesian Bore Bath as the sun was going down.  It is a large pool that has been established for public use and has a natural hot artesian water flow directed to and through it.  The water temperature does not vary much throughout the year ranging from a low of 39°C up to 41°C which is just like the water temperature in a bath you would draw at home.  While the water is clear it does have a bit of a sulphur/mineralised smell about it.  We chose to consider that to be a 'positive' thing, namely, 'complementary natural bath salts’.  The soak in the naturally hot water was just what we had been hoping for and went back to camp that night feeling thoroughly clean and relaxed.

Relaxing in the hot artesian bath at the end of the day!

In the next episode of WTF? – Where are the Farrows?, Heather returns to Queensland for the first time since we left it over 9 years ago!