Where do I start with White Cliffs? As we have experienced before, this is a town where the more one digs (that was unintentional, but I'll leave it!) the more surprises pop up. Let me summarise with the comment that, for us, this town was as much about its people as its opals.
At the risk of the accusation of descriptive sloth (to which, in this instance, I must enter a plea of guilty), I've again resorted to the words of 'Aussie Towns' to provide an introduction.
"There are four significant opal mining settlements in Australia. Coober Pedy (popular with backpackers and tourists because of its closeness to the Stuart Highway), Andamooka (still like the Wild West), Lightning Ridge (quite sophisticated and suburban) and White Cliffs, which seems to have just the right balance between wildness and civilisation.
Of course to outsiders all opal mining towns, where miners dig endless holes looking for seams of opal-bearing rocks, possess a certain level of craziness. 'The largest unfenced loony bin in Australia,' is how one person in Broken Hill described the town [I have a 'T' shirt from Cooktown bearing exactly the same comment].
To the objective observer White Cliffs is really a single purpose town. Miners started coming here (the local Aborigines found it far too hot for permanent settlement and occasionally visited the place as they travelled to and from the Darling River) in the 1880s and, apart from its minor function as a service centre for the surrounding properties, it remains a town driven by opals.
The summer temperatures, typically over 40°C, forced the miners underground.
The 100 million year old sandstone conglomerate in which the opal seams were buried carried two advantages. It was remarkably stable (no one has ever died from a mine collapse in White Cliffs) and it was relatively easy to dig. By around 1900 miners were burrowing into the hills in an attempt to find opals and escape from the heat. The real way to see White Cliffs is from the air. It appears like a strange moonscape with an estimated 50,000 disused diggings.
Surprisingly, the town has many attractions apart from opals and opal mining. There is the fascinating experiment known as the "solar dish concentrator power plant" (a precursor to solar panels); the wonderful Bill O'Reilly Oval with not a blade of grass; the unusual underground accommodation; the amazing night skies sparkling with billions of stars and far removed from any urban pollution; and the various shops where opals are sold by the people who mined them [we'll visit many of these spots shortly]."
And on top of all this there is a thriving arts community in this tiny outback town, something which seems to be almost at odds with the harsh and unforgiving environment in which it flourishes. In addition to the annual music festival which we had so much enjoyed, the town hosts the White Cliffs Gemfest on odd years and the White Cliffs Underground Arts Festival on even years.
On a less sophisticated note, the pub holds a 'yabby race' every Easter Saturday, and the Anzac Day Parade and ceremony draws folk from a wide area, as does the April gymkhana and rodeo. The folk of White Cliffs do know how to party!
In thinking about just how to present this remarkable town to you, I've decided to do so in three separate sections, roughly geographically based. In my usual inexpert fashion I've tried to depict these areas on this Google Earth shot of the town and the opal fields.
The section encircled in green will the the subject of this missive, the 'town centre' where I've arrowed the location of our caravan park.
The red section encloses Smith's Hill at the bottom and Turley's Hill to the right. The two arrows point to the Bill O'Reilly Oval and the location of the old solar power station.
It probably comes as no surprise to learn that the area at the top of the shot encircled with the yellow line is the area of the diggings, 'The Blocks' and that of the third hill of White Cliffs, Sullivan's Hill.
As I have already noted, the White Cliffs community is highly geared to welcome tourists and make their stay as informed as possible. To that end the Tourist Association White Cliffs has produced a marvellously detailed pamphlet, at the centre of which is this map (which I've actually photographed on the park office wall).
As you can see, once armed with this map there can be no excuse for missing anything White Cliffs has to offer.
So let's get on with it, beginning with the outlook to the north from our park. I've included this at this point to emphasise the fact that White Cliffs does exist in a bleak and arid landscape, where, like Coober Pedy, the vast majority of the population live underground.
The other thing which immediately struck us on arrival was the amount of junk which lies scattered around the town. Many of those who live here seem to have a real problem with discarding anything. I was told that "you just never know when it might come in handy"! I will concede that many of the above ground sections of the dugouts do demonstrate some very creative building techniques and a clever use of whatever happened to be at hand.
Our caravan park was located to the northern end of Johnson Street, where the town swimming pool abuts the entrance.
By normal standards the pool is not large and there is a very good reason for this. Water is one of White Cliffs' most precious resources.
Indeed I think I have previously noted that, a week or so before our arrival, the town website gleefully trumpeted that a recent rain event had now filled the town water storages and that the severe restrictions which had been in place for some time had been lifted.
I later learnt that the ranges to the east of the town form a natural 'water funnel' and that the storm which had lashed the town had dumped sufficient rain to fill the storage facilities (this all operates on an ingenious system of channels and gullies). Normal use supply was now guaranteed for the next three years!
Whilst on this subject I should also point out the comment in the 'Aussie Towns' introduction which notes that the White Cliffs area has always been too hot and dry to encourage any permanent aboriginal settlement. This is a real point of contention at the moment. Some of the local 'brothers' have lodged a native title claim which has resulted in real consternation for many of the dugout owners in respect of the legality of their title.
To add to the angst and confusion, a highly respected aboriginal matriarch from Wilcannia actually stood up at a recent public meeting to castigate those pursuing the claim noting that there had never been any permanent aboriginal settlement here and accusing them of sheer greed. This is very much a case of 'watch this space'
But I digress.....back to Johnson Street, where just south of the pool stands a building which if not located here in White Cliffs would probably not attract any real attention, but here it is a real oddity.
This beautifully maintained building, now a private home, was the town's original Post Office. Completed in March 1900, when the summer heat was forcing everyone else underground, this public facility was built on the surface....and, of all things, from corrugated iron!
Goodness only knows what prompted this bureaucratic lunacy, but the current owner is certainly happy with her quite grand home with all its shady nooks and crannies.
Opposite the old post office the town primary school sprawls over quite a large area (this is a rear view from Church Street)
and even if the spacious playground looks a bit barren,
a real effort has been made with the gardens of the front entrance,
which to my amazement included a time capsule in the front yard.
One might wonder about the standard of education the youngsters of this town receive. Concern yourselves not......the eleven students ranging across all age groups have the benefit of two teachers (interestingly, a mother and daughter) which means they enjoy a teacher/student ratio which would be the envy of most.
Along the length of the school property we found another example of White Cliffs ingenuity where painted barriers have been placed to provide some protection for the children. This is the town's only 'footpath'.
The town health centre on the other side of the road would not normally attract too much attention, but for one thing,
the quaint looking stone in the front yard
which acknowledges the work and commitment of Maureen Ker in what I would venture is a typically quirky White Cliffs manner.
Nearby is a memorial of a different kind, the town War Memorial which was clearly a 'work in progress'.
The somewhat ramshackle looking White Cliffs 'Art House' was the scene of much hectic activity on the Saturday morning of the music festival, but I was more interested in the 'interesting' looking yard behind it.
With the Community Hall in the background, this brush emu which poses proudly at the northern end of the Art House, carried a sign on its neck pointing to 'Doug's Place'.
I trotted off down the dirt lane running to the east off Johnson Street to see what this was all about.
What an extraordinary place this is.......a dirt yard cluttered with all manner of figures, all of which have been crafted from scrap metal bits and pieces.
Some of the detail was quite incredible. Just look at the cowboy with the lariat for example. I could not even begin to fathom just how long this exhibition had taken to make and assemble.....yet another example of the arts and crafts of White Cliffs.
With another quick glance at the exterior of the Community Hall with which we were by now all too familiar,
we continued our march south along Johnson Street to the point where it crossed Keraro Street, the intersection which could fairly be described as the real 'commercial centre' of town,
with the General Store on one corner (would you believe that in all our time here we actually never went inside!)
and our newly found friend Seagull's hotel/motel on the other (we definitely darkened this door...more than once!)
Diagonally opposite the pub there stands a most impressive looking building,
probably the largest in town. This 'masquerades' as the National Parks Information Centre, but what we quickly learnt (from more than one thoroughly peeved local) was that this is the town's 'white elephant'.
Apparently costing over a million dollars to build, this building now stands unattended. Despite the fact that much of the tourist blurb announces that here one can learn all about the Paroo-Darling National Park, some 40 kilometres to the east of town, this place is deserted.
It is, however, kept open and some of the displays inside were more than interesting, but as Liz commented, the counter area behind which staff stood at some stage, looked as though the attendant had 'walked outside for a fag'. This was all very weird!
But, as promoted, the displays remained, and the door was never locked, well not during daylight hours at least.
Fairness demands the comment that what we did find here was fascinating,
and highly informative (this is but one example of a number of these boards).
Who on earth would have thought that there would be a direct connection between the Australian outback (and seriously outback in those days) and one of the most famous and widely read British authors. I have to confess these little discoveries really make my day!
A short distance south-east of this main town intersection we came to one of the town's better known attractions, promoted in the relevant brochure as 'White Cliffs' iconic bottle house and opal showroom'.
The Stubbie House includes over 60,000 bottles in the construction of its walls,
although there is a fair bit of plaster and other material surrounding each of them,
as this shot of an interior wall (taken from the business website) demonstrates.
We have no interest in making opal jewellery part of what we have to include in our household insurance list, nor do we have anywhere to hang newly acquired paintings, so a visit to the interior of Joe's Opals in the Stubbie House was not high on our agenda.
One thing we had already learnt about this town was that there are wide open spaces between many of the attractions and points of interest. From the front of the Stubbie House looking back
towards the Information Centre, the store and the pub (on the right) demonstrates this point nicely.
By now we had two more recognised points of historical interest to visit in 'White Cliffs central', and to that end we toddled off east along Keraro Street past the pub and store
until we reached the next (un-named) street running north.
With the influx of miners to White Cliffs in the late 19th Century, the powers that be recognised the need for the maintenance of law and order, so in early 1898 a Police Station was established together with an abutting Court House.
And here they are, now abandoned and looking somewhat forlorn in their isolation, a situation which has existed since 1947 when the policing function was relocated to Wilcannia.
And finally, what was by now an old friend, one of the few stone structures to be found here above ground, the squat and solid St Mary's Church looking far less crowded than it had on Sunday last.
Walking the short distance between the old Police Station and the church, we passed several White Cliffs homes with all the surrounding clutter which is utterly typical of much of this town
and had a clear view to the east where the communication towers dominate the top of Turley's Hill and the fronts of the dugouts peak (?) out from the slopes.
In my next we'll wander to the south to visit the oval, the sports club, the quite remarkable solar power station and the town's underground motel deep under Smith's Hill.
