Graham and Edith 2012 Trip: Day 19 May 2 2012

We started the day with a visit to "Chambers of the Black Hand". This is an amazing underground experience. Artist Ron Canlin, who emigrated to Australia in 1980, has spent 15 years carving the walls of the sandstone mine. Apparently he had no formal training and downloads his pictures to sculpt from the internet. He has owned the mine for 28 years. He carved out steps down to the mine, there are 86 steps down. It is hard to put into words what we saw down the mine shaft but it was certainly a once in a lifetime experience. There are over 500 carvings ranging from a 10ft high Buddha, angels, jungle cats and super heroes. There is even a sculpture of the "Last Supper". One wall down there is dedicated to past and present Prime Ministers. As you can probably tell by my ramblings it was a great experience and one we would highly recommend to anyone visiting this area. It was difficult to do the sculptures justice with photographs but I will include some as they are worth seeing.

After lunch we went to see the "Glass House". This is a house that is made from bottles. There is even a "Dog House". After this we went for a dip in the Artesian Spa - this one is much hotter than the one at Burren Junction. It is about 38 - 40 degrees.

The Glass House

The "Dog House"

Can you spot a familiar face?

Olley enjoying the heated water

Tonight we have been to a show called "Black Queen". The Black Queen is group of three huts which were hand built by Joan Andrews, who while recovering from breast cancer, became a stonemason at 60 years of age. It took nine years (1979 - 1988) to complete and incorporates 14,000 coloured bottles in some great feature walls. Gale the present owner tells the story of how she came to buy the place and the history. There is also a lamp museum and some of the old lamps were incredible dating back to 700 A.D. One that we saw and held was 4500 years old. There was also a match box light (used by diggers in the 1st world war).