BT-50 Enlightening Ridge

The expanse of NSW might pale in comparison to the mind-boggling enormity of WA, but for variety of terrain and spread of population, there’s a tonne of interesting places to explore. Or escape to. Or hide away in. Not everyone wants to live like sardines crammed into inner-city terraces, in much the same way that not many folks can withstand the claustrophobia of a mining pit, digging for opals.

Out in Lightning Ridge – the epicentre of the elusive but highly prized ‘black opal’ –chipping away beneath the Earth’s surface, submerged inside your mining claim, isn’t every local’s idea of a good time, either, but plenty of them still do it. That’s because they’ve caught what is referred to as ‘opal fever’. And once you develop the taste, it’s apparently so addictive that it never really leaves you. Which is why so many men (and the occasional woman) have gravitated towards this charming, welcoming, yet also endearingly odd outback town over the past century or so.

Located in the upper middle of the state, around 8.5 hours’ drive from Sydney but only 40 minutes south of the Queensland border, Lightning Ridge is a melting pot of different nationalities, to the point where surprisingly few people can actually lay claim to having been born there.

People come from everywhere, including our motley crew all the way from the state capital in an optionally uprated Mazda BT-50 SP Pro, equipped and ready for whatever mother nature throws in our general direction.

Lightning supposedly never strikes twice but one fateful evening in the 1870s, a beleaguered shepherd, his dog and a flock of more than 200 sheep were peppered with lightning strikes as they sheltered among trees, charring like minute steaks on a piping-hot barbecue. Folklore says this is how Lightning Ridge earned its name, and indeed there is a fantastic ridge – called Nettleton’s First Shaft Lookout, named after the bloke who essentially founded the black opal industry in the town – which provides a spectacular, west-facing, 180-degree horizon view, elevated well above the blanket of treetops below.

It's out here, having traversed the Green Car Door Tour route off Bill O’Brien Way, that we meet our first ‘local’ – English-born Richard. He lives a short distance back from the dirt road to the lookout, occupying a modest pair of dwellings surrounded by his quirky artwork.

The one closest to the road is vaguely a point-of-sale shed called ‘The Love Shack’ (which has a sign on its side, painted in rainbow colours, for ‘Enlightening Ridge’), and it fronts his garden menagerie of creations – one of which is a large, robot-like statue constructed from milk crates and decorated with teddy bears. It’s an ode to his great grandfather, a milkman back in London, who lived a tough life and never showed any vulnerability. The stuffed toys represent the softness he always kept hidden.

Richard is not particularly interested in opal mining – even though he does allow one claim on his property – but he’s incredibly interesting as a person. Having arrived in Australia in late 1982, he separated from his partner and child not long after, and decided the best way to heal his broken heart was to head north-west on a horse, towing a gypsy wagon behind. Three states and many years later, he ended up not far from Lightning Ridge.

“I’ve been here now 17 years,” he says, “which is the longest I’ve lived anywhere in the world. I did that journey purely because I needed answers for me. With the horse I had my freedom – that was most important. The horse kept turning around and looking at me and saying ‘well, pfft, I think you’re silly’ [but] I sorted out the difference between my needs and wants.”

I ask Richard what has kept him at Lightning Ridge. “With the horse and wagon, I had my freedom. When I arrived here, I had that same sense of freedom here. And not a lot has changed my mind since. The residents here are just an incredible community of mixed people. At the last count there was something like 55 different nationalities, and we all get on – it’s that simple. You have to.

“It’s all very accepting from the point of view whereby if you want to tell people to go away, you can tell them to go away. And you’ll get left alone – simple as that. But if you fall over, somebody will come and pick you up again. That’s the way it works here.”

It’s the drawcard of the journey that brought us to Lightning Ridge, in our kitted-out BT-50 SP Pro – a toughened ‘enhancement pack’ developed in-house by Mazda Australia. Featuring lifted Old Man Emu suspension with Nitrocharger shocks, very cool 18-inch ‘off-road’ wheels, and an LED light bar integrated into the front grille that proves literally brilliant at night when hammering along dirt roads, the SP Pro pack essentially beautifies, strengthens and brightens the already flash BT-50 SP.

Activated by pressing a dashboard switch to the right of the steering wheel, the LED light bar then turns on automatically once high-beam is activated, and the difference it makes is dramatic. It throws a broad spotlight on the area directly in front of the BT-50 – reminding us of the bright white illumination used on sports fields at night – and this helps to identify imminent potholes and wildlife to avoid on unpaved surfaces.

To properly test our tough white ute, and to get to the physical heart of opal mining out here, we head 75km south-west to the Grawin Opal Fields, which sounds a bit like a dirt-churned wasteland but is actually a wealth of (visual) riches.

There’s a triumvirate of pubs – forming a geographical triangle of outback culture – as well as quite a few locals who live out here. And the dirt road in is brilliant – freshly graded so it’s relatively smooth and easily traversable in a regular car – which the SP Pro dispatches in an effortless display of poised handling and loping turbo-diesel pace.

Owners can select between levels of firmness for their uprated springs and Nitrocharger shocks at the point of purchase, and the set-up fitted to our SP Pro makes it feel athletically tight, yet effortlessly robust when faced with big hits. In challenging conditions, the BT-50 SP Pro shines.

We have a brief gander at the ‘Club in the Scrub’, then push on to the Sheepyard Inn, which, with its well-shaded beer gardens and high-ceilinged interior, is something of a desert oasis. We stop for a quick drink … but become transfixed by the rusting artworks decorating the roadside out front. Think of just about any truck that populated Australia’s unplanned road system right up to the 1970s and it’s probably here – International Harvester, Bedford, Chevrolet, Morris-Commercial, Albion, a yellow HQ One-Tonner and even a pair of rust-free 55-series Landcruiser wagons, that would be highly prized.

Yet most of the locals seem to drink at the Glengarry Hilton, the oldest pub in the area, which is where we meet Adelaide-born Lumby. Wearing a dog-eared army hat covered with commemorative war pins and smoking a roll-yer-own cigarette, he grabs a beer and illuminates us on what brought him to Lightning Ridge.

“I’ve always loved opals, since I was 11 years old. Even between some of my [job] contracts, I used to go to Andamooka [in South Australia, to dig for opals] – I loved it there. Then, in ’87, we did an open cut mine and found 64 ounces of opal. If it was good opal, we would’ve got $7 million. We only got about $45,000 – it didn’t even cover our costs – but it was a good experience.”

‘The thrill of the chase’ is what they call it – that’s what keeps these guys hooked. For Lumby, like so many others, the money you make from what you find is almost incidental. Instead, it’s all about the journey.