Nindigully to Lightning Ridge

19/07/2012
Somebody told us about this country pub, not far from St George, where you can camp in their backyard for free and happy hour is from 4-30 onwards with cheap beer…… Well we couldn’t miss that, could we?
 A half hour drive and we are camped at the Nindigully Pub where apart from cheap booze they do a giant 5:5kg road train burger… with chips! We doubt if we could manage one between us.
 Travelling down here we passed through thousands of acres of cotton plantations which was harvested a couple of months ago. We drove by an enormous yard where the harvested bales of cotton are stored, impossible to count, there are so many. Each bale is the size of  a shipping container, the product of 70,000 acres of cotton fields, an amazing sight. The cotton is waiting to be exported to China who set about turning it into crap clothing before sending it back…………..why?

20/07/2012
 Happy hour at the pub was moderately entertaining, a singer who had a bit of chat and sang country music which I can’t stand. American country music I find appalling but when you get an Aussie trying to copy it, it’s even worse.
 Back at the van, after the pub, it was so cold we were thinking about spoofing for who wears the beanie in bed but I had hidden it anyway! Needless to say with below zero temperatures and no power to run the heater in our metal box we were under the duvet before you could say brass monkeys
 We were up and on the road early just to get the cab heater going and to catch a bit of sun but it still took an age for our feet to thaw out.
Today we have driven 250ks further south and over the border into NSW to the oddly named town of Lightning Ridge famous for mining black opals, it also has hot artesian bore baths.
The campsite we are on is superb being brand new and just a five minute walk to one of the hot thermal baths which we have already had a wallow in. The water is 40c and a bugger to get out of in this chilly weather. It is supposed to have health giving qualities, good for arthritis, aches and pains but so far the challenge has been too great for my, beyond repair, corpse. Maybe there would be better results if they gave away free ibuprofen and a couple of six packs of Tooheys while you wallow.

  21/07/2012
  We stopped up until midnight last night listening to the test match on the shiny thing, we had the heater on full bore ‘cos we can, and enjoyed listening to our English team do well. An Englishman is going to win the Tour de France but we continue to be useless at wendyball.
 Lightning Ridge is proving to be a bit of a disappointment as everything seems to be focused on opal mining, except for the hot baths and a very good art gallery. John Murray is a well known Australian artist who paints outback scenes and cartoon characters in an outback situation.  We like his work and have one picture so far, we will probably own some more before we leave Oz.
 Happy hour around the campfire here on the campsite tonight was held in the kitchen, too cold round the fire. The lady singer was dismal, country crap as usual but also she failed to keep up with her own accompaniment. We could hear here from our van, even with the door shut! I’ve had enough of wailing wannabe Mary-Lous and Billybobs.
 
 22/07/2012
 There isn’t a lot more we can see or do at the moment here at Lightning Ridge. To be fair, there are four drive yourself tours of the opal fields which we haven’t done due to all the rain we’ve had recently. The tracks when it’s dry are ok for 2WD but right now they are too boggy. We have made a return trip to John Murrays art gallery and bought some prints which we will hang in our Australia room when we return to Kinnoull, that will be the dunny then!