2006/06 Australia trip - Gemtree zircons and garnets |
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Thursday June 15th
On a warm morning, we collected our sieves, bucket, pick and shovel, and a couple of water containers, and lined up behind Cameron, who was going to lead us out to the mudtank fossicking area. “Fossicking” is a uniquely Australian word that covers looking for rocks, gems, and fossils. On one of our earlier trips we had to get an official fossicking license from the government before we could dig, but this time we didn’t need one as we were part of a tour.
Cameron took us further along the Plenty highway, then a gravel outback road, and then cross-country through areas of digging to the spot where we were to dig. There was a noisy mine site just to the south of us, and they were digging for mica and crushing it into vermiculite. The mica is in the layers just below the zircons. The purplish zircon crystals are in a layer a couple of
feet deep, shared by yellow and green apatite, and very heavy dark grey hematite.
The searching process for zircons is similar to that used for sapphires: use the pick to break up the layer, shovel rocks into bucket, carry bucket to shaker, shake rocks to get rid of sand and small pieces, wash rocks in sieve in half barrel of water, give second wash, flip sieve over and find the zircons smiling up at you. Two other couples came out with us, but they’d given up by lunchtime and we had the afternoon to ourselves. Ourselves and the flies, that is. The Outback is notorious for its flies, but they only seem to be a real nuisance in the tropical parts.
We each had about a hundred flies crawling over us. They don’t sting or bite. They just crawl into your mouth, eyes, nose, ears, anywhere there is flesh and moisture. There’s no hope of effectively swatting them, so it’s either wear a face net or just put up with them, which is what we did.
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Gemtree (5.22) |  |
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We quit in late afternoon, found our way back to Gemtree through the diggings, returned our rented gear, and took the stones to Grant for analysis. Sandie had a bag full of nice apatite for tumbling and polishing, and a few dozen zircons. About a dozen of those were clear enough to be faceted and made into jewelry. We were worn out and covered in red dust and our clothes were streaked with red stains, ready to be used in our garnet dig the next day.
There is not much wildlife around the diggings, just a few birds, but we did see a big red kangaroo on our way back. There are some real characters though in the campground and on these tag-along tours.
Friday June 16th
We were up early again for out tag-along trip out to the garnet fields. This time, Grant was our leader. He took us east along the Plenty Highway, past the point where the blacktop ends, and then a short distance to where we were going to dig for garnets. The ground was much softer there than at the zircon mine, and the process just involved digging out the sand, sieving it dry, then sieving it wet, and sifting through looking for black, shiny stones. If they shone reddish purple when held up to the sun, then they were probably garnets.
Sandie and I had a good production line going, with garnets regularly chinking into our can of stones. The only snag was the flies. They were twice as bad as the previous day. We were peering into sieves of wet stones and the flies just loved the moisture, but instead of going for the stones they would cover our faces and line up along our lips. Eventually we had to get out the head nets we’ve been carting around for years. They are intended to keep mosquitoes off, but they work equally well for outback flies.
By mid-afternoon we were the only people left at the mine, and we worked on for an hour or so by ourselves. When we took our garnets into the office for analysis, Aaron told us that we had more than thirty garnets large enough and clear enough to be worth cutting, about twice the average, and over a hundred other garnets.
One of the stones we had found had turned out to be kyanite, and Grant promised us some information on the mineral. That evening he came over with a large sample for us. He said there is a hill nearby that is littered with the mineral. This was just another example of how friendly people are at Gemtree.
In the evening we did our washing. The campground had no dryer, so we ended up hanging the clothes out in the dark on an impromptu clothes line around our little grove of trees. Most of the red stains seemed to be permanent.
Saturday June 17th
I heard a stumble and then a thud as our line went down in the middle of the night. I got up to put it back up but there were no clues as to who or what had hit it.
Grant stopped by in the morning to help ID a bird we had seen. He also had some more stones for Sandie, a zircon, a garnet, and a beryl. I asked him what he did in the summer when it’s too hot to mine at Gemtree, and he said that he works as a firefighter in Victoria. He’d recently been on an exchange visit to Canada, fire fighting in Salmon Arm, BC.
Next.