Exploring White Cliffs

Just recently, Dot and I took a short holiday - less than two weeks long. We travelled to Canberra first, vising family members there for a couple of days. After that, Rebecca joined us on a long 11 hour trip to the far west of New South Wales to explore a region largely unknown to us. We stayed in a few different places for 9 nights before taking another long drive back to Canberra where we stayed another day before returning home. The entire journey covered no less than 4,500 km (2,800 miles). This is a little more than the distance between Seattle (in the USA's Pacific Northwest) to Miami in Florida. By the way, the distance between London and Moscow is only a trifling 2,900 km.

This and a few subsequent blog posts display some the experiences (all pleasant) that we had during our trip. The first day saw us driving north-westwards from Canberra through a long line of small towns and increasingly sparsely populated areas to White Cliffs near Broken Hill. None of us had visited such places as Harden, Stockinbingal, Temora, Ardlethan, Barellan, Griffith, Goolgowie, Hillston, Mossgiel, Ivanhoe, and Wilcannia. I've listed these places so that you can trace our route on a map. Most of those listed only had a few hundred residents and some hundreds of kilometers were on gravel (unsealed) roads. As you can imagine, we had little opportunity to alight from Bec's car and look around these places. One place, Barellan, did however capture our attention. It is where Evonne Goolagong grew up. Don't know her? Well, she's one of Australia's ... and the world's ... top tennis players, winning 14 Grand Slam tournament titles back in the 1970s and 80s. She received a British OBE in 1972 and an Australian OAM in 1982. Barellan has a park named after her and it has a model of her signature wooden Dunlop racquet, but 20 times its original size!

This picture shows a typical dirt road in the Australian outback. Although not sealed, the road was level and easy to drive along. 

Note the countryside is as flat as a tack and also has few trees. However, the grass was fairly green after recent heavy rainfalls.

Apologies for the dead insect on the windscreen! We collected heaps of those in our travels.

We reached White Cliffs in the later afternoon and checked in to our motel. This one was highly original because it's an underground motel with bedrooms and other facilities hewn out of rock as the following pictures show.

Corridors like this one were also under ground.

However, this design had several advantages. In summer, when outside temperatures frequently exceed 40 C, the rooms are quite cool. In winter, when it can be much colder outside, the rooms then feel quite warm.

Here's a view of Dot and Emily enjoying a great meal in the underground dining room!

The reason for staying in White Cliffs will appear clear with many of the following pictures. The town's 'raison d'etre' is simple. The surrounding environment has large quantities of valuable opals. And the mines themselves provide an interesting environment to wander through. In addition, visitors are allowed to fossick through mining debris to find and take away attractive pieces of opal. Alas, we didn't have time to do that.

Before we look around the mining environment, I might mention that we could climb on to the top of the motel to have views of both sunsets and sunrises. Have a look at the lovely colours they provide.

OK. Let's have a look around the town and its mine sites. The first picture below caught our attention because it show's Uncle Dick's mineral claim. Well, Dot's now deceased brother also had that name!

Perhaps it's therefore appropriate to show the local cemetery which we visited.

The next two images show typical views of the opal diggings with lots of surplus, and rather white, rock piled up on the surface

We were amused to see toilets scattered around the diggings, each with a curious name. Here we have everybody's toilet, nobody's toilet, and somebody's toilet!

We took the opportunity to visit the town's 'White House'. I was rather hoping to see Donald Trump, but it turned out to be an elaborate miner's house owned by one of the area's leading opal miners. We were allowed in to see the house's features and elaborate decorations.

Next, the owner asked us to get in our cars and follow him to his mine. We received helmets and instructions or information  about equipment.

Then we proceeded into the mine, as shown here. Parts were occasionally lit by shafts up to the surface. Then there's a picture of Dot listening to comments about how opals are found and mined. Finally, there's a picture of the machinery used to claw rock from the mine.

Finally, there's picture of me after the mine visit standing from of a sign welcoming us to White Cliffs appropriately standing on on a pile of white tailings from various mines. We thought about finding time to fossick through such piles of rubble to see if we could find some shards of opal, but we couldn't find the time. Instead, I paid a few dollars for a small glass container containing quite a few little pretty pieces of opal. It is standing on my desk as I type this post.

All told, it was a great experience and highly recommended.

AS