Farewell Lightning Ridge

In about an hour we will be leaving Lightning Ridge. We have made many new friends here and it will be a bit sad to move on however am looking forward to hitting the open road and adventures once again. We gave it our last shot on Tuesday and once again went specking at Grawin - but the big colourful nobby alluded us.  Funny story - Rob was working out Aaron's mine on one of the agitators - he was up and down the ladder many times and on his last day there he picked up his rubbish and put it in the bin.  As he was doing this he kicked a stone out of the ground.  As he was talking, Aaron bent down and picked up the stone Rob kicked out of the ground - it was a blue and green nobby and worth $2,000!!!! If Rob had picked it up and handed it to Aaron he would have got a percentage but alas it was not meant to be!!!!!! Rob did however get to finally go down a 60 metre shaft on a loose ladder (scary) with no torch or lights.  He got to the bottom and waited for his eyes to adjust and then he saw a small glow in the distance - he walked about 50 metres and found the boys hard at work looking for opal - they managed to pull up about $1 million in opals in 6 weeks!!
After 5 weeks we finally got to see the last step to opal mining - the cutting and polishing of stones.

Happy cutting and polishing a small black opal with a smidge of red through it that Rob found.  There are two wheels on the machine - one for polishing and one for cutting.  Water runs continually as this happens.

So it's a fond farewell and a big thanks to our happy hosts Teena and Happy for looking after us at our time in the Ridge, we have great memories of our stay here (and a jar of small colourful specks toprove it).