Gas and Oil

Friday, 15 June 2012


It has been a beautiful day in Roma – a very pleasant 25 degrees after a very chilly 2 degrees overnight. It is so nice to have the caravan windows wide open and get the washing dry on the clothes line.

This morning we headed for The Big Rig and Oil Patch and found out how oil and gas were first discovered in Roma. There was a large walk around, interactive display, complete with commentaries, fog and descending drill bits, trucks, technical support vehicles and drilling rigs. Cat had a lovely time climbing on the equipment and ignored all the keep off signs. The displays concluded with a 35 minute film (made by Santos) which showed what life is like working for the gas and oil companies, as well as how the gas and oil is found.

An inspection of the local Woollies rounded out the morning.

This afternoon, we decided it was time to swap the winter wardrobe for the summer wardrobe – definitely time for some t-shirts and shorter pants! We had to take it in turns to empty, then refill our under-bed storage bags, then Leslie had to actually climb under the bed to put everything away again.

Himself has just directed an obvious caravan backing novice onto his site –  herself then had to go over and get the caravan straight, to resounding applause from the three women watching!

We have both been battling sore throats the last couple of days, probably thanks to the hot springs at Lightning Ridge. Of course, as everyone knows, man flu is far more serious and debilitating than female sore throat!  It has been very pleasant this afternoon just sitting in the sun, reading a book, listening to and watching the dozens of rainbow lorikeets in the gum trees around us.


Tonight we are off to the light and sound show at The Big Rig, just to reinforce what we learnt this morning about the oil and gas industry.

Roma

Thursday, 14 June 2012


A chilly but clear morning in St George as we packed up and were on the road to Roma shortly after 8.30 am. Fortunately, the temperature quickly rose to a pleasant 20 degrees before we arrived at Roma. The country was flat all the way and the road not too bad, but a bit bumpy in sections. We passed plenty of cotton, sorghum and cattle on the way, with a large number of emus, two foxes and five dead dingoes. The dingoes were rather strange in that they all seemed to have been shot about the same time and three were actually strung up from trees.

We stopped for a short break at Surat (only town between St George and Roma anyway) and pulled up in front of a gospel horse drawn van, which looked very much like a gypsy caravan. Cat wasn’t interested in getting out for a look as there was a large cattle dog sitting beside the driver.

Roma is quite a large town which a Woolworths, Woolworths petrol, KFC and MacDonalds! We treated ourselves to a delicious lunch in a very nice bakery/coffee shop before heading to the information centre. We left loaded down with enough paper information about the Carnarvon Gorge to keep our tree plantation owners happy (and seed experts!). Everyone we have spoken too are “fairly sure” we would get our caravan into the camping grounds, despite the steep dry creek crossing, so we will probably make the attempt.

The Villa Holiday Park at Roma is our home for the next couple of nights. Although we feel it is only an average park, after looking at all three caravan parks in Roma, we are convinced it is probably the best. The Top Tourist park was almost in the centre of town and caravans were parked with their rear ends right up to the end of the public footpath – didn’t really do a lot for us! We are parked under a boab tree, which is very nice.

Happy birthday to my little sister.

St George

Wednesday, 13 June 2012


It was a beautiful morning in Lightning Ridge, not as cold as previous mornings, and the clear skies stayed with us all day. Once we crossed the Queensland border, the temperature immediately rose to 20 degrees! Today the short sleeves came out, and someone even found a pair of shorts to wear.

The road today from Lightning Ridge to St George was still on the bumpy side, but nowhere near as bad as south of the Ridge, thank goodness. He who makes these decisions, decided to wash the caravan before we left this morning, so once we were hitched up, it was down to the car wash to give the van a quick, and much appreciated, shower. Of course, what did we run into on the drive north? Road works!

Today we saw many, many emus and a large mob of kangaroos – we even had a fox do a quick dash across the road in front of us. Lots of wheat paddocks and plenty of cotton plantations on the way; St George seems to be the centre of a large cotton growing area. We heard a couple of truckies talking and one was taking about 60 tonnes of cotton seed to Brisbane.


We are staying at the Pelican Rest Tourist Park in St George, which is a very nice park with large grassy sites and lovely shade trees. There is even a supply of clean bath mats in the amenities for use in the showers.

This afternoon we visited Stavros and his carved emu eggs – quite an experience to listen to this man from Greece! He only carves the eggs, doesn’t paint them and would have well over a hundred on display. At one stage, I thought we were never going to get out of his sports shop (where else would you find an emu egg display?). We enjoyed a lovely walk through the park along the bank of the Baronne River and discovered the local council had installed exercise equipment along the way. Of course, it had to be tried out – the rowing machine required some degree of effort and someone thought the shoulder press would show off his six-pack (I think it was still in the caravan frig!!!).

Lady of the Lamps

 4,500 year old lamp

 Tsar Nicholas II's lamp

 Whores' Lamps

Tuesday, 12 June 2012


Yesterday evening, we had the most fantastic experience – we visited the Black Queen. There we twelve of us in the group and we were invited into her camp to hear her story and experience her lamps. Her camp consisted of three “cottages” and the first one we entered was the combined kitchen/living/bedroom. It was in this room that Gale told us her story, how her and her husband left their high-powered careers in Sydney and moved to Lightning Ridge. We moved to the second cottage and Gale became the original Black Queen, Joan, who told us her story, how she came to Lightning Ridge and built the camp, with only some help from her husband. The coincidences were quite serendipitous! Then this amazing woman took us into the third cottage – and into the world of lamps. This was no museum collection of look but don’t touch. Gale actually passed some of her lamps around for us to handle; it is impossible to describe the feeling of holding a lamp which is 4,500 years old! Some of the lamps were just exquisite, with the most incredible glass/crystal works. Gale even had a lamp, with bears holding the actual lamp, which had been made for Tsar Nicholas II. The most unbelievable would have been the whores’ lamps – the shades contain three circles of coloured glass; red for stop (busy), amber (nearly ready) and green (ready or go, of course). Legend has it that this is where the colours for traffic lights originated!

Today was more a housekeeping morning, with laundry, cleaning, car washing, etc. Of course, the first thing that happened was a trip to the supermarket for bread! We did visit (or stop outside) the bottle house, but didn’t feel inclined to pay the admission price to see the bottles from the inside. This afternoon we played a game of bowls at the Lightning Ridge Bowls Club and met some interesting people, not only from Lightning Ridge but other tourists like ourselves. We both won on our rinks but Leslie came away with the runners-up prize of six stubbies. A good afternoon all round.

Opals

Monday, 11 June 2012


Although it has been a gloriously sunny day, the cool southerly breeze has kept temperatures down and the polar fleece on.

This morning we were picked up at 8.30 am for a tour of the opal fields. Our very informative bus driver told us he mined opal for five days a week and drove buses the other two so he could make some money. The impression we were given was that opal mining was not usually profitable – but there do seem to be thousands of people doing it! Unlike Coober Pedy, Lightning Ridge is actually scrubby and there are literally thousands of mines scattered about within a twelve mile radius of the town. Old car doors seem to be the way that people identify their camps and there are four colour-coded car door trails for the tourists to follow.

About 4,000 people (predominantly female!) live in camps outside the actual town and these range from the occasional “proper” house to caravans, buses (even a double decker), fibro and tin sheds, even a stone castle. We stopped at a tin and bark hut dwelling of two rooms which was the home of a multi-millionaire before he died. People come here to live for the life style. We also stopped at Amigo’s castle, which had never been finished. Amigo lived in a shack behind it. A concrete “observatory” had been constructed by a Polish gentleman – he scavenged all the left-over concrete from building sites to construct his dream. Cat wasn’t too sure that the concrete chairs were the most comfortable he had sat on.

A drive to the top of Lunatics Hill revealed a small open cut mine, possible when a consortium of six joined their leases and discovered the largest black opal found – it is now in the Smithsonian Institute. We were given the chance to have a look among a pile of rocks and hopefully find an opal ourselves. Someone found a likely looking piece, spent some time admiring the colour and giving it a good suck to help bring out the reflections and then was rather disappointed when the bus driver informed him is was a VB “opal!” Of course, no tour is complete without a visit to the obligatory gift shop, where we were given a Devonshire tea before an inspection of the jewellery on offer.

We were dropped off back at the caravan at lunch time, and with no bread left in the cupboard, headed for the IGA Supermarket. Should have gone before breakfast! No bread left on the shelves and the bakery had sold out well before lunch. No crumpets or muffins, even. We eventually found one loaf of raisin bread, so at least there will be something for breakfast tomorrow. Decided we would treat ourselves to a bought lunch but then had great difficulty in finding somewhere that was open (long weekend holiday here!). We ended up at the bowls club, which is massive, with a large dining room, even larger bistro, coffee shop and two bowling greens. Of course, hundred of poker machines as well!

We visited the John Murray Art Gallery on the way back to the caravan park – such a wonderful collection of very Australian art and humour. A couple of opal shops were also given the once over.

A soak in the hot springs turned into rather an “event;” we sat on the steps (in the water) between two Croatian men and the talk did become rather heated and political. One of them left quite hurriedly and the other then started lecturing us! It wasn’t long before I started to feel a little overcome by the heat – of the water, of course.

Jolts and Jars

Sunday, 10 June 2012


Another brisk morning with clear skies; it is amazing how much longer the days are as we head north. And today, we definitely headed north – to Lightning Ridge. We were also in for a surprise as we quickly discovered the horror road of yesterday was just a doddle compared to what we faced today. It was almost 300 kms of constant pitching and rolling. By the time we had covered 100 kms, seasick pills were starting to look very attractive! Les even commented that Bass Strait was smoother.

We have come across some unusual names for shires in our travel but believe Bogan Shire would have to be the best. We were very intrigued with the sign which stated “Bogan Catchment Area” and imagined bogans being rounded up and taken to Bogan shire.

We had originally intended stopping at Coonamble but were discouraged about doing so. The town did seem quite nice but there was a rodeo happening in the town this weekend, so it was probably just as well we stopped at Gilgandra.

We are staying at the Opal Caravan Park in Lightning Ridge – the park is only a couple of years old, has large gravel sites and one of the best amenities blocks we have come across. The staff is very friendly and happy to provide tourist information and make any bookings required. Cat decided to put his head out the door after we arrived and noticed the next door neighbours had a small dog. Not being very diplomatic, he said it looked like a rat!

Best of all, there are some artesian pools just 200 metres down the road and after the jolting our spines received this morning (and the stress of last night’s football match), it wasn’t a hard decision to find the bathers and head for the hot water!

We have entertainment in the caravan park this afternoon, around the camp fire.

Gilgandra

Saturday, 9 June 2012


A very crisp -2 this morning and we are over being told that, being Tasmanians, we would be used to the cold! Once the sun came it, it quickly started to warm up after we left Cobar, heading east for Gilgandra. The drive to Nyngan was absolutely glorious, good road, flat, no wind and lovely country – sheep and wheat farms, with a corridor of trees along the road.

At Nyngan, we turned south and changed drivers. The pilot certainly knew the best time to hand over control – the Mitchell Highway between Nyngan and Nevertire would have to be the worst stretch of road we have ever travelled over with the caravan! The road was straight and flat, but certainly not level – it was a complete mish-mash of lumps, bumps, dips and hollows. The caravan constantly pitched and rolled in all directions; just as well we didn’t have any cream in the frig otherwise it would have turned to butter!

After making it to Nevertire, we turned east again, and changed drivers, before travelling through cotton plantations. This is the first time we have actually seen cotton growing in the fields – there were still some crops awaiting harvest and plenty of bails ready for collection. Near Warren, we passed at the Auscot processing depot. The township of Warren looked a very prosperous place, was neat and tidy, had a reasonable shopping centre, a golf course and a bowling club, and what looked to be a nice caravan park. Well work a remember if we are in the area again.

We arrived at Gilgandra at 12.30 pm and checked into the Gilgandra Caravan Park. This is a nice grassy park, with very large sites. However, it is right beside the Newell Highway, so there may be a bit of truck noise during the night. With the temperature hovering around the 18 degrees, and no wind, we were actually able to sit in the sun and eat our lunch today. Afterwards, we walked into the small township, had an ice cream and walked back. As we were here a few years ago, we didn’t revisit the Coo-ee March museum.