A town famous for its black opal fields that attract some 80,000 fossickers annually from around the world.
Where is it?: 768 km north west of Sydney and 72 km north of Walgett.
The Lightning Ridge area is a world epicentre of the mining of black opals and other opal gemstones, having the largest known deposits of black opals in the world.
Lightning Ridge is a flourishing tourist town with numerous caravan and camping parks, the previously very rustic Diggers' Rest pub and a well-appointed bowling club with its eight artificial-grass bowling greens.
Lightning Ridge is an important paleontological site, with fossils dating back to the Cretaceous period, 110 million years ago. The sandstone rock once formed the bottom of a shallow inland sea where the remains of aquatic plants and animals were preserved. The site is especially important as a source of fossils of ancient mammals which, at that time, were small creatures living in a world dominated by dinosaurs. The fossils are sometimes opalised and discovered by opal miners.
Lightning Ridge has abundant hot water from a bore spring into the Great Artesian Basin and offers two hot water pools for bathing. The minerals make the water very healthy for external use and drinking. The public can tap mineral water at a hose in Harlequin Street. The Hot Artesian Bore Baths and Nettletons Shaft, on McDonald's Six Mile Opal Field have been placed on the Register of the National Estate.
Origin of name: said to be thus named because a shepherd, a dog and 600 sheep were killed in an electrical storm while sheltering on a ridge at the locality.
Brief history: The first European to discover opals here was Charles Nettleton. Nettleton had been an opal miner at White Cliffs. He started seriously prospecting on a hill, later known as Nettleton's Hill, on Angledool Station in 102. This was to become the site of Lightning Ridge. The Lands Department later gazetted it as Warrangulla and it was known as that until World War I when it reverted to its original name.
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