Sat 17th May – Day 9 - White Cliffs

Bit of a rough nights sleep - about 2am a storm blew in out of the west and howled all around us, the camper rocked and rolled and the canvas blew ‘in and out’ while the temperature plummeted. Finally about 4:30 all was eerily quiet, then the rain started (we didn’t put the awnings up last night as:
• We couldn’t be bothered and
• It hardly ever rains here!
Luckily the rain was short-lived and sleep came just on dawn only to have our next door neighbour fire up his radio about 6am – the joys of close living.
However the $1 hot showers cured me and well fortified we set about exploring the town. First stop Brian Moore’s Opals – Brian no longer owned the place but that didn’t stop the new owners inviting us in and charging $1 to tour through their dugout. Now a dugout is a complete dwelling dug into the side of a hill. Only the front door sees the daylight. Many use old mine shafts and expand them to form rooms. My god what an eye opener – I think the place was exactly the same as the early 1900’s when it was first hand dug with pickaxe. 2 very small rooms and dust over absolutely everything. The bed was covered in bits falling from the roof and the wardrobe consisted of plastic bags of clothes pilled up in a corner. It become apparent that they had only had electricity for 10 years in White Cliffs and theses people still showered and toileted outside. Chloe & I brought ourselves a little Opal souvenirs each and Toby went fossicking out front and turned up a couple nice pieces of ‘potch’ (that’s opal without the magnificent colour). Leaving Brian’s old place we asked the kids if they wanted to experience a night underground – the look of terror on Chloe’s face when she thought we wanted her to stay there was priceless.
Up around the heritage trail we tried our luck at fossicking through the old dumps and turned up a few albeit small pieces of opal, then onto ‘Jock’s Place’ – a goofy old-timer who has lived in the area over 40 years. He seems to have made a rabbit warren out of his patch of underground and we were led through a vast array of junk, memorabilia & historical relics all accompanied by Jock’s larger than life tales of mining woe. Further around Turley’s hill we came upon Peter & Joanne’s underground B&B and knew we just had to stay there whatever the cost. It was clean, bright, exiting, and best of all the working mine went straight off our bedroom – we figured we were some 10 metres below the surface and 30 metres from the front door. Their daughter ‘Kaija’ was Toby’s age and 1 of 8 kids at the local primary school – she jumped at the chance of having kids to stay and quickly took the kids off into the recesses of her dads Opal domain. Needless to say we didn’t see them much, how can a wooden cubby in the back yard compete with a dugout mineshaft full of secrets?
Later that afternoon we also toured the Underground Motel, Otto Rogge’s amazing underground photographic studio, gawked at the now defunked ANU solar power station and were the only Saturday night diners at the local café.

‘PJ’s Underground B&B’ - $212/night