Chambers of the Black Hand: Is this Australia’s weirdest art gallery?

Lightning Ridge opal mine Chambers of the Black Hand has become a subterranean art gallery. Undergound tours take in tunnel after tunnel of sandstone carvings.

Chambers of the Black Hand in Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, is one of Australia’s weirdest tourist attractions.

It is perhaps no surprise to see an opal mine tour in one of the opal mining capitals of the world. What is unusual about Chambers of the Black Hand is the underground art gallery.

History of Chambers of the Black Hand

When Ron Canlin moved to Lightning Ridge in 1982, his plan was making a fortune from opal mining. Alas, the disused mine he bought was not an especially productive one. Canlin got some opal out of it, but not nearly enough to make him wealthy.

Plan B was to open the mine up for tourist visits. But while doing so, Carlin started playing with the sandstone walls. Other miners might have seen bare walls, but Ron Canlin saw canvases.

The Chambers of the Black Hand started in 1996, after Canlin dug 20 metres down to open his tourist mine. He dug out a room where he could demonstrate opal-cutting, and decided to carve a welcome on the wall.

Mine carvings in Australia’s weirdest art gallery

That welcome carving gave Canlin the taste for further carvings, and they got more elaborate over time.

Nowadays, Canlin’s tourist mine is an underground art gallery, with an extraordinary series of carvings. There’s a wide variety of inspirations. One minute, it’s Atlas holding up the world, the next it’s goblins, wizards and dinosaurs.

Famous figures represented include the Archangel Gabriel, Nostradamus and Buddha. The masterpieces at Chambers of the Black Hand, however, are the Egyptian Room and the replication of the Last Supper. The latter took six months to carve.