Driving on to Lightning Ridge today, we stopped around halfway at Narrabri. We went to Australia's Telescope Compact Array. It was well set up for tourists with good information around and it was all free and self guided. Playing with the whispering dishes were fun, where two dishes face each other about 50m apart and if you stand in the right position and whisper, the sound comes out clearly for the person at the other end.

The compact array is where they use 6 x 22m antennas to work together to simulate the effect of one large 6km diameter antenna. They use the radio waves they detect to create pictures of things in space. The compact array is so sensitive that it could easily detect a mobile phone signal on Pluto.




We arrived in Lightning Ridge in the afternoon and this place is the capital of the Black Opal. One of only a few places it is found although recently some more has been discovered in the Northern Territory bringing the price of opal down a bit as more is available. Today is probably the hottest day we have had on the entire trip being in the high 30's. So it was really good to spend the afternoon in the pool.