Black Friday! Our plan had been to tour a mine today. The
guy that owns it has spent the last 14 years carving statues while mining (for
decoration). It was closed due to the rain so we did a self drive tour instead
through the older section of town. It is called the “Red Door Tour”. Lisa and
Stuart lead the way, reading the guide as we went. It is a novel way to see old
Lightning Ridge, with red car doors as our guide. It was a 4WD tour as the
dirt roads had again become creeks with the downpour we’d been having since last
night. There certainly are some crazy buildings out here. I’m not sure about
their council building codes.
Following this was a spot of opal shopping. We had to wait for the shop owner to be
phoned. He hadn’t come, thinking there would be no tourists on such a wet day.
There was some beautiful artwork in John Murray’s Gallery
with beautiful and novel paintings of Lightning Ridge and the outback in
general. Michael purchased a poster,
then it was time to head to Tamworth. There was a rain cell sitting over us the
whole way.
Heading into Wee Waa Col hit a galah. I could hear it scream
moments later. The poor thing was still alive, caught up near the front wheel.
Col helped me get it out. There didn’t seem to be any broken wings. Hopefully there’s
not too much internal damage. I took it back into the bush away from the road,
getting a decent bite for my troubles. A flock of galahs came to its cries of
distress. I hope it will be alright. I totally swamped the bite in antiseptic gel.
There can be all sorts of nasties from parrots.
The plan was to take the kids to Macca’s for lunch which
they think is an amazing treat. Our headlights stopped working, so we had to
follow Stuart closely into Tamworth, arriving at dusk at the Freemans for a
little reunion and a one night stopover.
It was a very enjoyable farewell dinner at the Safari Club
where we ate, drank, were merry and celebrated some amazing memories from an
epic adventure. Time to plan the next one!
We gave Madison part of her birthday present, an opal
necklace (more to come tomorrow). Col ordered 1 of everything in what were
already massive meals. Even he couldn’t eat it though.
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