February - Vegetation and vertigo!

Our travels have not all been about rocks and ancient land. As always the plants fascinate me - surprise surprise! Not the best time of year to view and identify many of them - for me at least as I am still a novice albeit an enthusiastic one and  they continue to draw my eye. 

We picked up a couple of great little brochures in Lightning Ridge - one plant sites and the other bird sites around Lightning Ridge. With these in hand, and my trust book on inland plants (love that book!), we took off for the surrounding bush. What an interest day! Learnt so much, but ended up with lots of questions - as always. Here’s a mixed selection of pix from that and other places on this trip. 

The vertigo? Travelling too long on very rough roads (knitting all the while) and my head is nearly done in - not surprise really. We could stop ....... who said that? Wash your mouth out!

Poverty bush - not sure which one.

One of the Dwarf Cassia species.  Touch their leaves and they fold up. Found on Bulloo Downs on the Wompah Gate Road

Myall tree. Beautiful shade trees with soft pendulous branches. At least the beast got a bit of shade!

This is the Warrior Bush (Apophyllum abomalum). I took this pic because the tree was absolutely choked with mistletoe. Even as trees were suffering in the drought, the mistletoe seemed almost to thrive.

I managed to get a pic of the flower of the Wild Orange (Capparis mitchellii). So similar to the Caper flower.







This is the Gruie (Owenia acidula) also known as Sour Plum, Emu apple plus other names.

One of many Aboriginal scar trees in a Eucalypt woodland along, actually a long way off, the road . The bark from these would have been used to make Coolamons.

The Stiff Cherry (Leafless Ballart) forms understory growth.

The Ballart isn’t very pretty but was an important plant to aboriginal I believe. 

Feral cactus were everywhere around Lightning Ridge but they were looking pretty stressed. This prickly pear has fruited but was dried out.

Wow! This is a prickly pear tree! Never seen anything like it.

This looks evil - Hudson Pear. An introduced noxious cactus. We saw so many cacti planted in Lighting Ridge and surrounds. Why do people do it? We have so many drought ‘tolerant’ native species - it’s beyond me. 

February 23 - Rocks and Rosé

Where are we? Yowah. Only learnt about it while we were on the road. It’s a wee dot in the middle of a cattle station! Wild life and cattle wander the streets and at the end of the village streets you simply drive into the bush. Or, as we did this arvo, into a public fossicking area. For a mad hour or so, we smashed up rocks with small rock hammers in a futile attempt to find opal. Stupid really not just because it was veeery hot, but opal is buried much deeper than we were tackling. However ..... we did find some quite fascinating sedimentary patterns in rocks when we split them open and that got me thinking. How long did it take for these patterns to be laid down. I reckon we’re talking 100s of thousands of years and there we were blithely smashing at it - so sorry earth!

I  tell you our rig is weighed down with rocks we’ve collected along the way. 

The Rosé? My new favourite cider. It’s delicious icy cold and in continuing high temps, it’s wonderful!

The colours and patterns are fascinating 


The public fossicking area at Yowah. We didn’t stay out long though - too hot.

The plains spread as far as the eye can see from the bluff at Yowah. Rather impressive.

I think that small shed to the right is the departure lounge! 

This bore was sunk over 100 years ago and continues to spurt out over 1 million litre of hot water everyday. We’re over the edge of the Great Artesian Basin and the towns and stations rely on this water - unless the rivers run and none are at the moment.

These ‘bathing boxes’ in fact contain baths.  Not sure if they’re still used but at 50 odd C I wouldn’t be looking to slide in!

The overflow from the bore flies through town feeding plants and animals for a couple of kms. Here the overflow collects in two quite large pools of cool water. I stood and watched fish breaking the surface and bubbles from fish and other water life popping on the surface. Lots of birds around - ducks, kingfishers, reed wabblers and other species. A very tranquil place!

February 22 - the Great Artesian Basin

For a while now, we have been travelling over or on the edge of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) - what an amazing phenomenon (the GAB, not our travels!). On our way to Yowah today we came across a series of mud (or mound) springs near Eulo. Such pressure-release valves as these, are a feature of the GAB - that’s a bigger story, which I’ll leave it to you to pursue for homework! Needless to say the water of the GAB ‘bubbling’ through natural springs, such as these, or through drilled bores, is the life blood of arid inland regions like this and further south and west. 

If you think about it, much of the water of the GAB is really ‘fossil’ water having collected over millions of years. And because of the ageing process (OMG doesn’t it happen!) as well as high temperatures and pressure, the chemistry of the water is different to rain and surface water. As a result and because of  the relative isolation of most springs, they are habitat to some unique plant and animal species most of which are listed as endangered and thus protected. Fascinating creatures really, for example the ‘water holding frog’ which spends for most of its life underground sealed in a waterproof cocoon (I know people like that - slap my wrist!) and the shield shrimp. 

The spring we saw was pretty dry, but the tops of the mud springs are usually soft and jelly like (although the mound spring we found along the Oodnadatta Track some years ago had water in it - perhaps a different kind of beauty). However .... these mud springs occasionally explode making a sound loud enough to be heard for many Km. And no we are not going to hang around to experience it! 

My head is hurting - too much to absorb!

The Yapunyah tree (Eucalyptus ocrophloia) is gorgeous; I thought they were Desert bloodwoods, which I love, but no.  These beauties seem to love to live near water. Their upper trunk and branches are a deep glossy red-brown. Their flowers so abundant and rich in nectar, beekeepers from across Australia bring their hives to Eulo to collect the rich honey. Must look for it!

The trees are pretty stressed out here- so was Lindsay - bloody flies!

February - opalised fossils

Once a forested plain near ‘Australia’s’ ancient inland sea, Lightning Ridge is world famous for its stunning black opals and fossils including opalised plant and animal fossils. It is in fact one of only a couple of places in the world where you can search for opalised fossils. Amazing place!

Each year, the Australian Opal Centre (AOC) and the Australian Geographic Society organise a couple of 6 day intensive digs to search for these fossils on the opal fields here.  And we’re registered to join them next year in August .....yippee!! The dig will be led by a team of paleontogists and other experts so we expect to learn heaps. It will be a rare and wonder-filled experience. Thankfully it will be cooler! 

February - gold, opals and rocks!

You may have picked up a thread of subtext running through our journey - fossicking and opals! Starting in NE Victoria panning for gold, we swung through White Cliffs (opals) then on to Tibooburra (gold) and then propped for a bit in Lightning Ridge (opals). All very interesting places, but I have since discovered a number of other opal fields - well there had to be really, didn’t there!  West of Lightning Ridge and north of Walgett is another area rich in opal - Grawin plus two adjacent fields. We took a side visit there of course - and had a coldie in the Grawin ‘Club in the Scrub’. So where are we now? Thinking opals?

Grawin (pronounced like Darwin) pub. Actually it’s a club and you have to sign in!

The opal dump at Grawin. Unfortunately NO public fossicking allowed.

February 19 - Car Door Tours

Lightning Ridge is well worth a visit - even if you’re not interested in opals! We took a few simple self-drive guided tours ‘Car Door Explorer Tours - so much to see. Here are some images from our explorations. 

Very cute. Old and not so old car doors used as markers for self-driver tours. You’d have to understand that around opal mining fields cars but mainly trucks are stripped down for their driving parts to bring excavated soil to the surface plus a myriad of other uses. The doors? Who needs them! So creative these miners.

The houses are whatever people can drag here!

Bottles and cans and stones. They’re all part of the ‘village’.



Idle moments lead to a little artwork.

Cans - there are a lots consumed here in the heat!

This and the next one are the site of the new Australian Opal Centre - 2 levels underground. Clever!



Ah the Corrugated Iron church. This was purpose built for the film Goddess of 1967. Look it up! I reckon in spite of appearances, it is occupied. Why not?!

Perched over a big hole (could be a cleverly disguised entrance to a mine! Pretty rough but funny - if no one is looking?

Worth zooming in on the info board but this is an important mining site which has been preserved for historic purposes. Tells a great story!

February 19 - exploring ironstone ridges

Still on the trail of the Caper White butterfly and  battling 40 odd C temps,  panting like the poor birds around us. But what a place this is! I’ve found just where I want to be - if I decide to go off the grid (a little more!) and go a bit ‘feral’.  Nebia Hill about 3 Km west of the Lightning Ridge township. 

It’s an Ironstone ridge, which attracts lightning - a namesake you might think, and it grows lots of Ironbark trees. More importantly, I found lots of Wild Orange (Capparis mitchellii) as well as Poplar Box (Eucalyptus populnea). According to ‘what they say’, both of these trees are indicators of opal. The Wild Orange tree has a 25m root system and, in Lightning Ridge, the large Poplar Box (also know as Bimble Box) are regarded as evidence of deep roots enticed by water percolation through deep fissures, a necessary factor in the formation of opal. Sounds good to me, but there are lots of ‘hypotheses’ and folklore about good opal indicators. Who am I to question the locals? 

Capparis mitchellii- the Wild Orange tree fruit. All those I could collect off the ground were dried and hard. Next time!

The Wild Orange flower - not at its best. 

The leaves of the Poplar Box are soft and delicate with various shapes depending on age from tear drop, to heart shaped to round - like a Poplar! They shine as the light strikes them, quite lovely. 

Opals or not, one could spend loads of time sifting through the gravel pits. Here on Nebia Hill, and probably other places, they contain petrified wood, jasper, quartz, agates, clear topaz plus plus. 

It, well actually most of Lightning Ridge, is a place where there’s a healthy irreverence for convention. So the structures are whacky and colourful and the incidental and other artwork highly ‘creative’. I just love it! 

The mining fields are less brutal here in Lightning Ridge than in Coober Pedy.

Looking out on the black soil plains. This is the site of the first hand dug shaft on Nebia Hill around 1900. The opal rush started c1905.

February 18 - on the road to Lightning Ridge

What a day!  Good start with savoury pancakes de tour in Bourke and ending with delicious freezing cold Sav Blanc in Lightning Ridge - opal desert country. Wasn’t on this ‘agenda’ (that I knew of) but I love the place so why not! Perhaps we’ll do a little opal noodling tomorrow - in the broiling sun. I’ll tell you about the Australian Opal Centre tomorrow or ....

Spotted a really unusual tree as we headed north east - the Warrior Bush (Apophyllum anomalum). This seems to be a bit of a relic plant. It’s host for the Caper White butterfly which, according to the pundits, probably moved into northern Australia with their food plants during the Oligocene. Yeah me too ..... but that’s approx 20-35 million years ago. The really interesting thing is that it is related to the Wild Orange (Capparus mitchelli) which in this area is regarded as an indicator of opal-bearing ground. I will be on its trail tomorrow - Michael take note! 

Ain’t travel an education - see a tree and a viola a lesson in geology - or something like that. As Miriam Baker (Out an About) says “Enjoy the journey and the destination whether it’s your first or fifth time. The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

This poor wee church is in Goodooga. Not indicative of the place but it just appealed to me - poor thing. Goodooga is a village NE of Brewarrina on the scenic route to Lightening Ridge.

The Warrior tree. Dotted about the landscape as we travelled further NE. Stands out against the surrounding vegetation. A few bits of trivia, leaves are present on young growth and the animals love browsing on the branches so most are bare up to cattle head height. 



These wily Roos were enjoying the sprinkler and chomping up the grass. Clever beasts - until the owner cane and shooed them off. 

Pancakes de tour - left over vege and anything else! plus onion and butter of course (plus Mum’s age old drop scone recipe).  Works for us!