2002/11 Australia trip - Gemtree |
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A little further south and we turned east onto the Plenty Highway, definitely an outback road, with just a single lane of blacktop leading into the Harts range of the East Macdonnell mountains. We made it to the Gemtree campground just as they were closing, and booked for a zircon mining session the next day. Graham and his wife created this place 20 years ago but it’s now up for sale. He gave us a beer! (We’d run out.)
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Plenty Highway (3.01) |  |
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The campground was almost empty, the end of their season, so we could choose any 
spot we fancied. I met up with a geologist from Perth who was staying in the area. We had a long discussion of glaciation in the mid-west of USA, wheat farming, and the relative size of black people in the USA and Africa. I never did find out what he was actually doing there, but people aren’t usually very forthcoming about what and where they are mining. This was our first cool night since arriving in Australia. Great sleeping weather.
Friday October 25th
We were up early for the fossicking trip. There were two others on the trip, a young couple from 
England on a 1-year working visa, out to see Australia. We each hauled out pick, shovel, water, sieves, and buckets.
Our guide was Ron, and he led us out along the Plenty Highway, and then into the bush on a rough track. The English couple were going very slowly to protect their car. I think it was about their only possession.
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Gemtree (6.50) |  |
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The procedure was similar to that for sapphires, except that the zircons were mixed with apatite and ironstone. It was easy to pick out the interesting rocks, but tough to 
actually distinguish the zircons from the others.
We think that Ron was another failed prospector. As soon as we found a big piece of crystal, he found a reason for us to move to a “more promising” area, while he kicked rocks around where we’d been.
He went back to the campground after that, and as soon as he left we moved back and
found some good pieces of zircon. These weren’t cuttable, but they included a nice large piece of a whole zircon crystal.
By noon it was very hot, well over 100, and I couldn’t drink fast enough to keep up with the dehydration, so we headed back to Gemtree for them to sort the zircons from the apatite.
Sandie ended up with a number of cuttable stones 
and decided she’d facet them herself this winter.