2010/09 Australia trip - 7Oaks at Inverell |
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From there it was an easy cross country drive to Bingara and then onto the Fossicker’s Way, the road to Inverell, the Sapphire City. Inverell’s visitors’ centre was closed but we found a pamphlet with directions to the 7Oaks sapphire mine, where we were supposed to be able to look for sapphires in their creek. We sloshed our way there through lot of creek crossings some with the water running high and muddy. We’d had a few showers on our drive but this area looked to have had some serious rain.
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Road to Inverell (3.31) |
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“Honk” the sign said and Peter the owner came out and led us back into the bush to his mine, a sea of mud with water everywhere. We camped above Fraser Creek, which was also running high and muddy, no good for fossicking that evening. Peter said that the creek is normally dry at this time of the year but they’d had a phenomenally wet winter. If we’d arrived when we’d intended, a day earlier, we’d have fossicked all day in the rain. “Fossicking”, by the way, is a uniquely Australian word that covers all kinds of prospecting and mining for gems, gold, and fossils.
We had the camping area to ourselves, but Peter came back later with his sons and a friend from Brisbane, and we spent the evening around their fire. The toilet and the showers were a bit rough and ready but the water was hot.
Sunday September 26th
The day began fair and sunny, and the mud was drying out; things looked more organized in daylight. Peter came 
and showed us how to use the gear. The sapphires are in the gravel of streams that flowed millions of years ago, when a previous generation of mountains was being eroded; these streams have no relationship to today’s Fraser Creek. Peter digs out the ancient gravel with his backhoe and piles it up in the work area. We dig from the pile and put a shovel-full into a coarse sieve, with a fine sieve underneath. We then shake the sieve vigorously inside a barrel of muddy water until all clay has dissolved. We look at the rocks in the big sieve and probably toss them away. We wash the small sieve again, flip it over onto a barrel covered in hessian and behold sapphires glistening in the sunshine. If nothing glistens, toss contents away and do it all again and again.
The gravel is encased in clay, which is hard to clean off, so most of the day is spent leaning over the barrel. Eventually the barrel fills with mud and Peter just tips it over into a pit, and his dog, a Jack Russell, waits for the big splash, barking furiously.
We started work as soon as Peter arrived. We were on our own for a while and then other customers came out on day trips and joined us for a few hours of fossicking. This currawong kept a close eye on everyone’s lunch to make sure nothing was wasted.
We were the last to quit for the day, when the light became too dim to spot gems. We had a respectable haul of small dark blue sapphires, and one spectacular half inch sapphire that was too large for the coarse sieve and almost got
tossed out with the other large rocks. Unfortunately, although the colour was great it wasn’t clear, good enough for a nice necklace but not enough to pay for our trip. The picture to the right shows our haul for the day.
By this time we both had backaches and were covered in clay and mud, and glad of the shower, even though we had to leave all the doors open so we could see what we were doing. That evening we had a fire, a rare luxury for us as we’re usually scared of burning the countryside down.