The Home of the Black Opal

Lightning Ridge is an opal mining town in northern New South Wales, about 50km south of the Queensland border. It's the home of the world famous black opal, and most of its 2,000 residents have come to the area in search of the elusive gem.

Population: ?

No one really knows the population of Lightning Ridge due to the unusual residential arrangement of the town. A great deal of the population live in "camps", which are temporary dwellings on the mining fields. Various attempts to calculate the population based on post office records, census information and bread sales have rounded the figure off to somewhere near 2,000.

Summer storms

Our local weather varies between the extremes of 45+ degree heat in summer, to freezing cold nights in winter. The extremely hot and humid summers generate some spectacular storms. These storms can range from small, isolated rain cells to supercellular storms and massive, state-wide storm fronts that thrive on the flat, expansive plains of inland Australia.

What's in a name?

Lightning Ridge was named after an incident that occurred around 1870, when a stockman, his dog, and his flock of 600-800 sheep were struck by lightning on one of the ironstone ridges near the town, killing them all instantly. About 10 kilometres from the town itself, at a roadside rest area, stands a small monument marking the location of this event.

Further information

Lightning Ridge on Wikipedia and Google Maps. The official website for Lightning Ridge, maintained by the Lightning Ridge Tourism Association. The Australian Opal Centre, an enormous state-of-the-art museum to be built on the opal fields at Lightning Ridge - their website has loads of additional information about the town, opal, and the history of the area.