Hot springs and tall ships

Good morning! It's Monday morning and hence it is blog morning!

The week was quite hot, up above +30°C (today it is very chilly though) and we have got the pool going again and have had a few delicious dips. I just love being in water; the weightlessness is magic.

Also magic were the hot springs we discovered on our latest trip. We didn't even know about them so it was really an added bonus. The one in Lightning Ridge is very hot, around +40°C so you feel like your skin is peeling off but after a while it is great. However, you shouldn't stay in too long though; you would probably pass out. 

This was our first experience of the Artesian Bore baths. We went there after dinner,  and then home and slept like babies.  Sorry about the bad quality of the photo.

The baths are mainly frequented by Eastern Europeans sitting in large groups, chatting around the pool, especially in the evening (it's open 24/7, and it is free).  One of the ladies started talking to me in her language, and I realized I probably looked a bit Eastern European.

I went into Sydney a few days ago for the big Navy Parade. There were 3000 sailors parading through Sydney from the ships moored in the harbour for the Fleet Review. They all looked a little bit the same after a while until the Indonesian Navy came by. They were a happy lot and lifted the sombre atmosphere a little.

After the parade I went to Darling Harbour to see the Tall Ships and I was mesmerized watching a young girl climbing up and un-doing the sail on Little Endeavor. It was worse than a circus act. I hate heights so anything like that makes me break out in a sweat. I couldn't leave until she was safely down again.

This bridge opens up in the middle and permits the tall ships to sail into Darling Harbour.  Hubby does miss the monorail which crossed this bridge and also opened up though.

Now I must go out and see if my tomato plants have grown since last night, so cheerio for now.

On the road to Lightning Ridge

We are out and about again, traveling, this time the goal of our trip was Lightning Ridge. It is a place I had read about and wanted to see. They mine for opals here and apparently it is the only place where you can find black opals. Generally opals are the national gemstone of Australia and black opals are  unique to NSW.

The trip here took almost 12 hours but we had a few stops on the way. One was a pit stop in Gulgong and it just so happened that it was "Welcome back to Gulgong" Day. So there was a market and a parade, which was lots of fun. Everyone paraded, the Golf Club members, the farmers, some herding sheep and some driving tractors, the motorbike drivers, the veteran car drivers, the camel-farm people, and kids from school etc. It was charming and made you feel like you wanted to live and belong to  such a community rather than being part of a big faceless mass in a big city.

The trip after that  went quite quickly though, maybe because hubby took the opportunity to teach me binary numbers.  So once I got the knack of it he told me a number that I had to give him in binary.

After a while we had to give up on that and play another favorite game - thinking of animals starting with an A and so on. This time we tried to do it in French. We have lived in France for 28 years but after being away for 3 years it seems that our brain have atrophied. We couldn't think of anything beyond 'chat et chien', it was pathetic.

The Outback is great! People can be a bit special, in fact it is almost a must. They have all come here for a reason, usually to find the big opal and get rich but it is also a life style. So many have given up their previous jobs to come out here and stake a claim. I was surprised though, to learn that of the miners, the female miners, then the families were in majority before the male miners. I really thought it was a male "thing" but clearly I was wrong.

We are staying in a B & B called Sonja's guesthouse and it it very nice and comfortable and it will be almost sad to leave tomorrow.

It is bedtime, after a full day out and about, of which  I'll tell you more later. So goodnight from Lightning Ridge, apparently called thusly after lightning struck and killed a farmer and his dog and his 600 sheep.