The Hole.......In The Ground!

We had a very relaxed start to the day today. Once we were up and at 'em we headed to the Breakaways. Along the way, we marvelled at all of the holes in the ground, which are all mine shafts. We stopped to take a few photos and found all of the shafts are uncovered. As opal is generally found at about 30m below the surface, these shafts are generally 30m deep. How dangerous!!

The Breakaways were about 30km out of town, and so not worth the drive! We took a pic for evidence and returned back to town. 

We went to an art gallery that also had kangas that they had rescued and now looked after. We got chatting to the owner, who is also an opal prospector, and he was saying there is about 4 million mine shafts in the area. 4 million!!! And only a small percentage of those are active mines. Surely they should be making these people back fill the mineshaft if they stop digging it. That would save a few rescue missions!! 

We then went to do our own noodling! The term noodling came about as people used to go looking for opal nodules, which became noodles. We just liked the idea of going noodling!! Sadly it is basically sifting through other peoples diggings to see of they have missed any opals. Quite a dusty and dirty activity really!! 

It kept the kids amused for a bit, Ronan even found a few shards of opal vein, so he was pretty stoked! 

We then returned to the kanga park for feeding time. There were four big kangas and they were also caring for five joeys, one of which he bought out to show us. He was sooooooo cute!! 

We returned to the park to find a gazillion people had arrived while we were gone. They squeeze people in like sardines in this park that's for sure!