Never having stayed at Opal Caravan Park in Lightning Ridge we were immediately delighted with this caravan park. It is situated in a quiet bushland setting only three minutes’ drive from the heart of Lightning Ridge.
The facilities at this park were modern with spacious drive through sites so that you are not on top of one another. This Park also has a doggy day care which we used a couple of days to leave Gracie. At $10 for an entire day, it was so good to know that she was cared for in a great environment.
After setting up (which doesn’t take us too long) we usually head straight the information centre and in Lightning Ridge this is on the other side of town from our van park. We had already researched a lot of things that we wanted to do, but going to the information centres you always find out more.
We found out that there are two very good Italian restaurants in ‘The Ridge’. There was no question that we would book into Bruno’s Italian Restaurant that night. The decision was easy to make as the other restaurant Piccolo’s is not open on Monday or Tuesday.
We were not disappointed at all with the meal or the service.
The following day in ‘The Ridge’ we went on the Black Opal half day Tour and after putting Gracie into ‘doggy day care’ we were collected from the van park in the tour bus.
The tour took us to places that we would have overlooked. We drove past Fred Bodel’s hut which is the oldest miners camp in ‘The Ridge’ and then through the site of the early opal miner’s settlement at the Historic Three Mile Flat. Bounding along in the bus we traversed the rugged road up to Lunatic Hill (love that name..) which is where the largest open cut mine was.
This tour company certainly knows how to entice the tourists. Mid-morning we were served a lovely Devonshire Tea while watching an opal cutting demonstration. We were then shown a private collection of opal jewellery and heard about the origin and the scarcity of the rare Black Opal.
We then visited The Bottle House, Amigo’s Castle and an underground mine tour which will have its own blog post. (There is so much to tell you -there are so many ‘Ridge’ gems)- pardon the pun!
So that was our morning introduction to ‘The Ridge’. Wanting to fit in as much as we could in the day we had quick lunch, the decided that we should now go and visit John Murray’s art gallery. John Murray’s style of art is very vibrant and depicts a unique outback whimsical realism. We already had one John Murray prints in the caravan from a previous visit, so a complimentary print was needed to balance the feng shui vibes.
After a fulfilling first day in Lightning Ridge it was time to settle down with quiet ale or two.