Tiki tour day 6

We left Baradine this morning after saying goodbye to the Baradine ladies. (Baradine post coming later.) I knew I had to drive to Coonamble but turned right instead of left and drove towards Coonabarabran . We got within 5 km when I realised my mistake!! Some expletives were released. We could have gone across country but the area around Walgett is flooded and there are a lot of roads closed so we thought we should stock to the main roads. So we did a u turn and headed back to Baradine!! 😭 We needed to be at Lightning Ridge by 2.30pm for our tour of the Chamber of the Black Hand caves, so I was concerned we might not make it. We only had a loo stop and grabbed some snack food for on the road and on we went.

Flooded area near Walgett.

We passed one closed road and several others had barriers, only locals could use, they were muddy and very wet. We arrived in Lightning Ridge with 15 mins to spare. Phew!!

We went into the caves, they are carved out of limestone, I took many photos but will just share a few here

Lion copied from a statue in Switzerland

They cover all topics- the man who carved them used a butter knife. He bought the mine to look for black opal but didn't have any luck finding any so used to carve in his lunch break. Then he started tours in his mine, carved stairs and created many more rooms with carvings. It was a really interesting place to wander around in, we happily filled 2 hours without realising it.

After that we came and found our cabin at the Opal Big 4, had a cuppa and then did an Adventure Lab Around the town.

The bottle house

We stopped at the art gallery of John Murray and saw lots of his paintings outside and around the town 

Castle home used as an Air B&B (we were there looking for Ad Lab answers)

We were invited in to look at the fading sunset, very kindly by the couple staying there.

the mosquito's were out on force so a quick photo and off we went.

We finished off the day with a soak at the Artesian Baths 

A lady very kindly took a photo for us and left us with her finger photo as well!!

I had better finish up, this is getting super long.

Happy stitching.