We went on another tour today - Black Opal. On this tour we visited -
- Fred Bogel's place, which is the oldest miners' camp here in Lightening Ridge. Living conditions here were very primitive
- The Big Opal - an underground mine with a spiral staircase (113 steps) down to the mine. This is still a working mine. The steps were hard work, especially coming back up. We were shown some opal that was still in the roof of the mine.
- Amigo's castle -
This building project was commenced in about 1985 by Vittorio Stefanato, better known as Amigo and is built from local ironstone of his own design. Amigo is a full time miner and spends his leisure time adding to the castle.
- Astronomers' Monument - This structure was built by a Polish guy called Alex. It is constructed with paint buckets filled with concrete. It is supposed to be an observatory but the dome could not be opened to make room for a telescope.
- Lunatic Hill - This is the largest open cut opal mine ever worked in New South Wales. It has been now been preserved for its scientific and historic values
- We had a go at fossicking for opal - found a bit of potch - not of any significant value.
We were amazed driving around the opal fields at the conditions some of the miners live in. Some of them live out in the fields in shacks and some in old caravans. There is lots of old machinery and cars laying around. One thing though at least there are no mines near the town centre.
Tonight after dinner we went for a dip in the Artesian Bore bath once again.
 |
| Kitchen at Fred Bogel's place |
 |
| Fred Bogel's Camp |
 |
| Open Cut Mine |
 |
| Some of the Solid Opals we were shown |
 |
| Observatory |
 |
| Amigo's Castle |
No comments:
Post a Comment