2010/09 Australia trip - Sapphire |
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Thursday September 30th
In daylight, we could see that we were camped alongside the Botanical Gardens. Although the paths into the gardens were underwater we could have got to the toilets by climbing over a small fence. Too late.
The people at Childs Tyre Service in Emerald were very quick and efficient. The problem had been a two inch steel spike we’d picked up from somewhere. A new tube and a patch to the tyre and we were on our way.
The people at the visitors’ centre in Emerald tried to be helpful but didn’t know much about digging up gems or about road conditions, so they sent us thirty miles down the road to the towns of Sapphire and Rubyvale for more information. Sandie wanted to spend the day digging for sapphires by ourselves out in one of the public fossicking areas, where we didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission. We stopped at the Blue Gem campground in Sapphire to buy our fossicking licence, as required by the state of Queensland, and to rent a pickaxe; we already had a shovel for other reasons. Along with the licence we received a map of the public areas and we set off on a short drive to the Big Bessie area.
There are two problems with this kind of digging; the first is that you don’t know the depth and thickness of the deposit. The deposits were stream beds millions of years ago, carrying sapphires from the mountain tops onto the plains, and the beds may be inches or many feet below the surface. The other problem is that the ground may already have been turned over by machines or by generations of miners.
We dug around a dead tree, not a spot most people would bother with because of the roots; it was virgin soil but turned out to be mainly red clay with very few rocks, let alone sapphires. As you can see from the picture, these mining areas lack charm.
We gave up on Bessie and moved to the Graves Hill area after lunch. You definitely need a four-wheel drive for this kind of country as the tracks disintegrate with rain into a mess of mud; and we’d had plenty of rain. We shared the area with these cute Brahman cattle who seemed very interested in what we were doing. This time we picked an area with more gravel; we found lots of pretty quartz and jasper, but nothing worth transporting back home.
I went exploring while Sandie was sifting, and was followed by a magpie which would swoop down and brush my head with its wings then fly to the next tree and wait for me. As soon as I took my eyes off it, down it would come again. After a half dozen of these encounters, I would keep my eyes on it until I lost sight of it behind the trees then swoop it was back again. It gave up the game when I started whirling 
my shovel like a baseball bat. (I’ve since read that this is common behaviour for magpies that have young in the nest. Remember to carry a bat or shovel!)
The weather was near perfect, warm and sunny with a cool breeze but we couldn’t call the day a success as we’d found no sapphires at all. We camped at the Blue Gem caravan park, a nice little spot on Retreat Creek, an opportunity to clean up and to replenish all the water we’d used in washing rocks. We had plenty of visitors, including this pretty horse and a pair of rainbow lorikeets.