And it’s something quite peculiar,
Something that’s shimmering and white.
Leads you here despite your destination,
Under the milky way tonight
Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find
-Under the Milky Way Lyrics as written by Steven John Kilbey Karin Gunilla Jansson
(A Soundtrack for this post: https://youtu.be/mA54NBtPKdI )
We recently took a short break and headed south west. I really needed a break. Needed to go bush, go to where I can really see the sky at night, and feel the earth beneath my feet. Feel surrounded by life, real life, green life, wild life. I had a vague idea that drifting in that direction would take us through the heart of the Great Artesian Basin. Some time spent soaking in the warm mineral-rich waters of the GAB might not be a bad idea and I have long wanted to visit a much undervalued First Nation site of considerable importance; Baiame’s Ngunnhu or the Brewarrina fish traps, generally considered to be the oldest man-made structure on earth. How amazing is it that something older than the pyramids and just as remarkable is in our backyard? Brewarrina is a bit out of the way, but it seemed like a good time to drift in that direction. I was hoping the quiet and calming emptiness of the Australian rural interior would be what I needed. Turned out it was not quite as quiet or as empty as I expected. It seems to be a bit of a post covid zeitgeist thing to travel and camp at the moment. So many people travelling. Fewer people travelling overseas maybe, and more seeking to connect with their own environment and home, not a bad thing.
We drove southwest to Goondiwindi, then across to Nindigully and then onto Lightning Ridge. Driving through country that was once ecologically rich brigalow country but now is defined by the barrenness of huge broadacres growing cotton or grains. Remnant brigalow is allowed to exist in narrow corridors along the highway often just enough to hide the monotony of broadacre monoculture on the other side. A lot of those vast paddocks were fallow, post cotton harvest, but some green with current grain crops in the ground. We have not walked softly on this land and I can’t help but wonder what this country must have once looked like and what it may become if we fail to manage this land carefully. Those vast cleared paddocks are open to soil erosion and soil deterioration in a way that open woodlands or smaller paddocks protected by corridors of woodland are not. I sometimes fear that short-term profit holds greater sway than long-term sustainability and the price we pay in the end may be more than many of us bargained for. Caring for country is a mantra we all would do well to embrace.
We spent the first night at Ninbigully pub, I will post on that later. We moved on to our second stop which was the first of three Artesian Bore locations, Lightning Ridge, perhaps the most well-known of the free pools. Our last trip to the Ridge was pre-covid, back in 2019, somehow the town felt a little faded and more touristy this time. This time the caravan parks were almost fully booked, almost, but we did get an overnight site but it was literally the last one in town. To be honest I would not have minded if we had just moved on to Goodooga our next stop which I knew had a free camp at the local bore Pool but we got a site so stayed with a trip to the pool that night.
There is something magical about an artesian Bore Pool at night, especially on a chilly winter night when the steam rises from the water and the starry sky is so brilliantly illuminated. Sinking into that brimstone-hot, silky water, and losing yourself in contemplation of the dazzling display of starlight on a winter’s night in big sky country, is magic. Those celestial gemstones are more astonishing than any blingy rock. The Great Artesian Basin is also the source of most of the world’s precious opal and opal is what the Ridge is really famous for. Especially the stunningly beautiful and rare black opal.
The GAB is a source of wonder. It is one of the miraculous contradictions of Australia. We are the driest inhabited continent on earth, only Antarctica is drier, and yet our dry inland sits atop the largest and deepest subterranean water resource in the world. An estimated 64900 million megalitres or enough water to fill Sydney Harbour 130 000 times. It is still a finite resource only refilling at a glacially slow rate and in recent years our continuous and caviller sinking of bores has resulted in stopping or decreasing the flow from some of those bores. Currently, NSW and QLD governments are leading attempts to rehabilitate and cap bores to preserve the resource into the future. (https://theconversation.com/water-in-water-out-assessing-the-future-of-the-great-artesian-basin-13104 ) Our even more caviller attitude to fracking for gas further threatens this precious and remarkable resource. Our inland agriculture is dependent on the basin, our ability to feed ourselves and other nations makes this a resource of inestimable value. Our underground water is the lifeblood of Australian agriculture in our dry interior, there is a kind of magic in that and a burden of responsibility to care for and manage this amazing resource.
The water that bubbles up to the surface can be as much as 2 million years old, itself a relic of the ancient Eromanga sea that once covered much of inland Australia, it is deep time water, so old it is hard to really comprehend its magnitude, an amazing and humbling thing to contemplate. This was the magic I needed. Time spent at night under the Milkyway watching starlight, some of which was itself anything from millions to thousands of years old, all contemplated while soaking in ancient mineral-rich water that had bubbled up from not just the earth, but from the past, from a time when raptor type dinosaurs wandered where emus strut today, how wonderous is that, how extraordinary, how complex and ancient is this land?
While opals themselves may not thrill me the way they do some. I do think they are beautiful. I just don’t get the extraordinary sums exchanged for them, what does take my breath away is the extraordinary, delicate, and stunningly beautiful opalised fossils that the Ridge has yielded. Opalised shards of bone or shell, tiny pinecones glowing with an inner golden or blue light, yabby buttons radiant with hints of the rainbow, all delicate, beautiful and still feeling vibrantly alive though transformed to stone millennia ago, now that is magical, wonderous. I ducked into the tiny one room museum displaying the fossils before we left town, I have never outgrown my childish fascination with the pre-historic past, dinosaurs and megafauna. I suspect I will never lose my sense of awe in face of the amazing diversity of life that once roamed this planet and this ancient land in particular.
The ridge has its own megaraptorid, the terrifying Lightning claw, the oldest and largest megaraptorid dinosaur found in Australia, so far only known through a fragmentary opalised skeleton found at the ridge. You can check it out here: https://eartharchives.org/articles/new-dinosaur-is-australia-s-largest-carnivore/index.html Our emus are probably the closest thing to Lightning claw still roaming the earth today. Makes you see those comic birds in a new light when you reflect on their similarities with their terrifying predecessors, it is reassuring that they at least are essentially vegetarians, give or take the odd bug.
We did not stay at the Ridge long on this trip just long enough for me to dip my toes back into pre-history and have a soak in the pool. Then on to Goodooga this time camping right beside the bore pool. The artesian bore pools rightly seem to be popular with the grey nomad set, hardly surprising, I could easily see my future winter months at least partly spent camped by a GAB pool, with evenings spent soaking in tranquil and cosy contemplation of life, the universe and everything. I do find it strange that most of the oldies seem to prefer to soak in the daylight hours, maybe they just want to avoid any chill on getting out. You only need to take a big towel to avoid that.
The Goodooga pool with a ramp into the water has disability access and shade cloth over the pool to protect from the sun. With virtually nothing else in the area it is less popular than the Ridge but still well patronised. Personally, I wouldn’t miss the shade cloth if it was not there, I prefer the open sky while I soak. Night time is without question the best time to experience an artesian bore pool. Sleep after soaking is amazing, not sure if it is the heat or the mineral content in the water really does have magical powers. The magnesium content is supposedly high and that may contribute to the quality of sleep, a range of other elements may also be working on the human body and psyche; potassium, calcium, bicarbonate, and sulphur, even lithium is a trace element in the water, whatever, it is I always feel amazing after 30minutes just warming in the pool. On those nights when I could spend some time in a GAB bore pool, I could slip easily into a profoundly deep and relaxing sleep. The meditative quality of the time spent in the pool undoubtedly helps. To be alone and float, steam gently lofting around you, gazing up at the splendour of the Milky Way while buoyed up by age-old, mineral-rich water gives you a healthy sense of perspective. There is great comfort in realising your own brief insignificance in the greater scheme of things. And to float under such a sky can make you feel as rich as if every twinkling star was a jewel in your personal collection.
For me the best of the pools was the last one we visited which was Burren Junction. By day the oldies use the pool. The old blokes tend to congregate in front of the inlet soaking up maximum heat, while little old ladies in sun hats float around the pool on pool noodles like OAP water sprites on sea horses. At night almost no one seemed to use the pool and as long as no one triggered the motion sensor lighting, it was dark, all the better to enjoy the sky and with no shade cloth over the pool obscuring the view it is glorious.
Where are your holy places? Where do you feel the presence of the sublime I know one of mine is watching the stars while floating in an outback bore pool on a cold winter night.
