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 is 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 where opal can be found. The Wild Orange tree has a 25m root system and, in Lightning Ridge, the large Poplar Box (also known 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?
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| Capparis mitchellii the Wild Orange tree. Its fruit looking for all the world like oranges! |
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| The Wild Orange flower - not at its best |
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| The leaves of the Poplar Box are soft and delicate with shapes ranging from tear drop to round. They glisten when the sun 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 is a healthy irreverence for convention. So the structures are whacky and colourful, and the incidental and other artwork is highly ‘creative’. I just love it!
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| The mining fields are less brutal here in Lightning Ridge than in Coober Pedy |
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| Overlooking the black-soil plains, Nebia Hill is the site of the first hand-dug shaft ~1900; the opal rush started c1905 |
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