Lightning Ridge

Lightning Ridge is known for its high quality opals but there's so much more to this outback town, from underground art to unbelievable sights. Here's our guide to a long weekend in historic Lightning Ridge

Start day one Bevan's cactus nursery and take a guided tour around the garden. Welcome to bevens our garden for 75 years in the creation and here on the ground since 1966 and plants out there over 100 years old. Here you can see one of the largest collections of cacti in the Southern Hemisphere. The white one isa hairy army golden barrel that we need it's a mother-in-law's cushion and then this one over here doing the whole circle is a klisto cactus

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Next take a trip to the australian opal centre where you can discover the prehistoric past of the ridge so that believe it or not, is the claw bone of a 100 million year old dinosaur. See rare opalized fossils artifacts and more.

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Hop into your car for a scenic drive to nettleton's first shaft lookout and watch the day pass you by with a

front row seat of the setting sun

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Wrap up the day with dinner at bruno's. Choose from the italian menu or just get a pizza and enjoy the outback

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Start day two early with a soak in a natural bore bath. The naturally heated water comes from the great artesian basin and is approximately 2 million years old

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The early morning sun is just what you need to energise you for your next stop exploring an original working opal mine, check it out.

Here's about a 75 year old opal mine that was all hand dug but basically by one guy and we've had stairs built down into the opal level down here so people can see exactly where we find it anywhere where there was a crack and places like that is where we hope

the opal is going to form.

You're saying that there's like heaps of opals just behind that? Absolutely. Wow

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The growing opal fields are where the first opals were discovered in the region back in 1905 and the growing club in the scrub is the perfect setting

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All right it's good.

Grab a quick night at the glengarry hilton before your next stop fossicking at the opal mines near sheep yard inn. Fossicking is when you go through debris of past miners to find any hidden gems they may have missed.  This could actually be something i think we should keep it. Well done.

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Start day three underground for an unforgettable experience in chambers of the black hand awesome! G'day guys welcome to the chambers.  Hey now what you're about to see is 23 years worth of work for a man who dug carved and painted everything with no art lessons.  Ron Canlin, a former deep sea diver learnt his craft whittling wood in a decompression chamber and in 23 years 800 carvings and paintings.

Next up the realest paintings of the John Murray art gallery are a must see. So John, he's originally from uh southern shire of sydney. He came out here pretty much just doing a road trip and never went back he captures the outback of new south wales. So this one here

tequila sunrise it's actually a camp which is in Lightning Ridge

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Spend the rest of the day shopping for souvenirs at some of the Ridge's jewellery shops to end the trip. I'm going to buy that one, yeah,

so cute.

So there you have it an outback gem full of hidden surprises. Lightning Ridge has something for everyone. For more details on this itinerary go to visit newsouthwales.com and for more great long weekend itineraries head to the new south wales youtube channel.

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I came here as a new grad and I've stayed on since. I've always  enjoyed working here - one of the other reasons is that I met my husband in my new grad year - and the team environment here and getting the things I get to do is second to none - you can't get to do it anywhere else.

You can Triage our here, you can canulate, venepuncture, IDCs, SPCs you name it - we can do it out here.

I am a ward nurse generally but obviously in a rural facility I am also an accident and emergency nurse, when there's a trauma or there's a need for it. 

I also do community nursing, we also have dialysis here at this facility, I've also done dialysis nursing and obviously we have palliative patients.  We have a lot of post rehab patients, so we do a lot of wound care.

The variety is on the of the things I enjoy the most about working here, also you have aged care, you have emergency and you have your normal everyday ward work, so every day is something different and you get to experience things you wouldn't see in the city as they would be swept away to a specialist unit.

I have so many more skills my friends wish they would have but don't, they don't get the opportunity with all the junior Doctors down there in the city.

My role is virtual outreach support to the nursing staff in the district, education sessions through the video conference we support the staff because they may have a question about a medication or a procedure.   For this month in May we have approximately a hundred virtual sessions offered.

When I started working here, they supported me for triage, like how to work in a rural ED. First of all if anything comes through the ED, how to handle that, I've done a vaccination course, advanced life support, so if something happens we can administer drugs.

We have excellent support from vCare which is the speciality emergency team based in Dubbo, and all the retrieval teams they can connect us with.

Here in Nyngan we are very lucky - we have the support of our managers and usually on call RN overnight.  

Because of the diverse nursing that I do I've always been able to do those extra courses whether it be palliative care, community nursing, dialysis.

We're using this technology and this education to improve, to help our nurses, support our nurses.

I've done lots of emergency courses through the district with training days on site here or just in Dubbo or in other towns and they've help further my skills give me that confidence to be in charge.

We do have more registered nurses starting, here - New Grads - which is also very enjoyable as you get to  help them and  you learn new things off them, things they are learning at uni or they have learned in other facilities, so the team is quite diverse but in a way it is very experienced and very strong.

Working in a small rural facility again, the team is not just the nurses on the ward, its actually the whole facility. I might ring a community nurses today to get an assessment with a patient that's being discharged tomorrow, I might actually speak to the front office staff about something particular about that patient, so actually everyone is involved because it is such a small community and a small facility so my whole team is everyone including the ambulance officers who walk through the door.

They're beautiful out here, I couldn't ask for a better team, they're all lovely, all supportive, you just couldn't find any, any team like it.

In a small rural facility everyone is dependent on eachother , its teamwork - if someone comes in ED everyone comes and helps you, they know what is there role and they support us in those situations, in every situation.

I had some free accommodation over at the units for 12 months and then I brought myself a house here in town - so I'm a permanents stayer.

There s no reason not to even if you don't stay out here forever the skills you'll learn in Western LHD will be transferable back in the city and the things you'll see you'll never see anywhere else.

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Now the key feature of the design is the opal so colors have been picked from the different types of opal specifically the black one as well to represent Lightning Ridge.

So this is the community health building. So staff in here will work in the community going out to people's homes and their focus is about keeping patients at home and not in hospital.

It's bright and it'll last longer so a lot of the facilities in the town are quite old and this will make it easier for them because we're right next to the hospital, very easy actually. It's been great from and quick so from arriving on the trucks to getting them put together and and it's been really good to watch it happen.

So as you're aware we've had lots of community members that have been living nearby that have been watching it and wanting to turn up today to actually see the completed item.

I think because we're rural it shows that they haven't been forgotten sometimes there's a feeling that in a remote area you don't get all the services so this shows that we are on the map and that we are getting services we need.

So we've had consultation with the health council all the way through so they've been involved in that um once we actually had the building built we've had the lands council come and have a look the Aboriginal land council from Lightning Ridge and they have been involved in the design of the garden and also the language the willa roy language.

We've also had this morning the smoking ceremony from auntie Brenda from the Lands Council and they've been involved with with all the Aboriginal language and science. We've also had the school design some really wonderful Aboriginal art for our three staff

Accommodations.

So we've had an echidna, a grey kangaroo and an emu and we will have the Aboriginal names for that put on the back

I’m just looking forward to all our lovely processes going well and seeing staff happy the staff love it it's bright it's breezy it's new and you know you can see them feeling quite proud of it already

So i'd just like to say thank you to everybody in the community who supported us had to look around come in and had given us ideas on what's happening thank you to the school for all their artwork and most of all thank you to the staff and being willing to come on board to look at new ideas and different ways of working

It'll be great