2020

Cameron Corner

Road Trip from Sydney to Cameron Corner

The Journey begins.

Joe picks me up at my place, and after a short-ish game of car tetris with my assorted belongings, we head over to Kathlyne’s. She has packed much lighter than I have and it is not long until we are on the road.

Joe has a block of land about 4-5 hours north of Sydney which is our first stop. It’s a quiet patch of woodland in the middle of nowhere, subdivided into getaway plots for those who want to escape the city, and those who already have.

After unlocking the gate Kathlyne and I jump up on the back of the truck to enjoy the short ride in the open air.  

We aren’t too sure which plot is Joe’s - it has been a while since the last visit and there are no obvious markings to show which is which. As we drive slowly along the dirt track, we hear the rumble of a quad bike starting up. A scraggly haired man in a plaid shirt appears driving wildly towards us.

“Oi” he yells “Oi mate”

Joe stops the car. I’m worried that we’re about to be confronted.

“Have any of youse seen a bull?” He asks.

He had let his bull out for a wander earlier that day before driving into town and was hoping we might have spotted it. After a quick chat and some directions to Joe’s plot we head on and set up camp for the night.

Dinner is cooked on the fire, and I photograph a flowering Xanthorrhoea illuminated both by the glow of the fire and the pale blue light of the rising moon.

I sleep without a fly sheet on the tent and am awoken periodically through the night as the moon passes across the sky.

In the morning, we re-pack the car for the first time and hit the road. First stop a tourist information centre, Kathlyne picks up a sticker and iron-on patch. This will be the start of a collecting game throughout the trip - resulting in a detour, or two, or three.

Waze was the approved navigation app out of Sydney, but I spot Google offering up some more adventurous options with shorter ETAs. Soon, our sealed roads only route is an unsealed adventure and we’re cutting across country and shaving a good hour off our arrival time.

Joe’s face lights up as his shiny new orange 4x4 meets orange dirt for the first time.

We stop midway to rescue a turtle that we have narrowly avoided, sitting in the middle of the track.

We have booked to stay with an opal miner on his block of land. He has arranged to meet us at a local club so that he can help us find the way through the bush to his place. It is September 2020 and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We pull up outside the club to find a sign stating “Nobody from Greater Sydney shall be permitted in the club - Sorry”. Joe leans over the fence and shouts for our host. He comes out to greet us.

“want a beer?” he says

We point to the sign.

“oh we’d best not then” he says “have you got beers in there?”

We have an esky full.

We follow him through the bush to his place. As we park up and exit the car we can clearly hear the sound of a crackly radio.

“Now, none of you live in the country do you?”

“No”

“Well, in the country you have to leave the radio on loud whenever you go out because snakes don’t like the vibrations. Now, another thing you’ll need to know about is how to use the long drop…”

We set up camp for the night and sleep beneath a blanket of stars.

At 6AM our host wakes up, turns on the radio at full volume and fires up the generator to get some water.

We aren’t exactly awake at 6, but had told our host we would be, so we can’t complain about the unusual alarm clock. We make breakfast and get ready for a tour of the mines.

First we go and take a look at the dump sites - huge piles of rubble that have come out of the mines, there’s a chance there will be opals in there that people have missed as they hack away at the walls deep underground.

Our host drives us up onto the dump, we are followed past the “danger no entry” signs by a car full of opportunistic tourists.

At the top of the dump site we jump out of the car. The tourists follow

“can we be up here” one of them asks our host.
"you’re not supposed to but, up to you” he says

We climb to the top of the rubble pile. Looking out beyond the mines, we can see the horizon in the distance.

We hear the dull rumble of a mining truck coming closer and closer. The tourists are in the middle of the track slapping on their suncream and arranging their hats as the truck pulls up around the corner at the top of the dump pile.

“Here, watch this” our host says with a glint in his eye “He’s gonna curse at em…”

The tourists on the track receive an earful of abuse and quickly get back in their car

“Alright, we’d best get going too”

There is a government safety sign on the way into the opal fields that explains the dangers. It is amusing, but also scarily accurate. Not a place to wander round unaccompanied.

Mining claims are 50x50m blocks chosen by an educated guess. Miners drill a hole, get digging and hope they’ll find opal. There’s no easy way to know if you’ll get a good claim until you start to dig. There’s a sense of romanticism about the whole thing - the potential of striking it rich down a mine in the outback clearly still has a strong appeal for many. And whether you think they’re mad or not, it seems a much better way to gamble than spending days beside a pokie machine.

Our host shows us how to use dowsing rods to predict if a claim will be good or not; whether the method is scientifically accurate is another matter - but it seems to work much better for Kathlyne and I than it does for Joe.

At the mine, we are given our instructions and then it’s onto the ladder and down we go. Joe goes first, then me, then Kathlyne. Or that’s what we had agreed until my legs turn to jelly and I decide not to go.

I wander around above ground for a good twenty minutes or so, then lay down in the tray of the ute in the heat of the midday sun. Sandwiched between a gas bottle and 20 litres of diesel, I wonder whether I would have been safer getting on that ladder.

“Matt” I hear Joe shouting, he has popped back up to check on me.

“It’s beautiful down there, and we’re finding gems in the wall”

After much conversation, and some unorthodox coaxing methods, I make it onto the ladder and down into the mine. I’m very glad that I did.

We all had a go at chipping away at the wall and got some small opal chips to take away as keepsakes to remember a very special day.

Joe has prepared a feast for dinner, and we invite our host to join us for food around the fire.

“You folks live pretty high on the hog!” He says, when he sees the dinner that Joe has prepared.

As day turns to night, the sky fills with the lights of thousands of precious rocks.