The Gemfields

With town names like Emerald, Sapphire and Rubyvale, our eyes lit up like emeralds, sapphires and rubies. With no equipment other than a pair of boots to kick the ground and a flashlight to pick up the sparkle, this was going to be a fossick in the park, so to speak. We spent a night by the railway line in Emerald and did the laundry and a top-up shop in the morning, before heading to Sapphire. The road between Emerald and the Sapphire was not great the rig rolling and and bouncing along the undulating highway.

We arrived at the Rod Day Park in Sapphire and Ken discovered the Sapphire Craft and Lapidary Centre. He was able to gather some vital prospecting information from a local and we headed on to Rubyvale and a free camp right in the middle of a prospecting field just outside of town. Apart from the odd prospector(metaphorical and literal) driving to and from their claim, we had the place to ourselves.

The Gemfields are a sort of genteel Lightning Ridge. The vibe was a lot more friendly and a lot less menacing, provided you keep a respectful distance away from any thing that looks like a claim.

That’s not to say there wasn’t any rusted and burnt out cars, or machinery that was a silent testament to failure. But their were more homes and less disparate 60’s caravans, and there was a willingness to at least discuss in vague terms the profitability of gem mining.

We couldn’t wait for the sun to go down so we could start looking around. Ken had been advised that anything that looked like glass we should pick up and take in the next day. We were after cubic zirconia. Sure enough, we had picked half a dozen clear glass like cubes in twenty minutes. This was sooo easy

Our reckless optimism lasted all of 20 seconds after we arrived back at the Lapidary Centre the next morning for our ‘show and tell’. In our hot little hands we were indeed carrying tiny cubes of glass…safety glass.

I’m not sure what was lost in translation, but the REAL advice was to find dark coloured rocks that you could see a sparkle in under torchlight. I had picked up and overlooked many black rocks the day before in my quest for ‘glass’. ‘Rueful’ would be putting it kindly.

However a guided tour of the Centre, where local prospectors turn their rocks into jewels, lifted our mood considerably. What an amazing place! Old hands, people who had come for a visit to Sapphire and stayed(for years), all toiling quietly away at their craft.

The precious stones were just one of several lines of creativity. Polished rocks and petrified wood were also refined here and in the case of petrified wood, buyers from the USA make it out here to purchase. We were given a walk through on the various processes involved including cutting, polishing, wire making for the pendants. The Centre is open to the public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and a donation for the tour is appreciated.

OK, so now we knew what we were looking for, We assumed that the surface had been picked clean, so we decided to try our luck ‘underground’.

Clearly, this was not particularly methodical or scientific and with the afternoon sun slowly sucking the will out of us, we decided to retreat to the shade of a cold beer and something in the camp oven that night. The next morning I stumbled off in the dark to catch the sunrise on top of Policemans Knob, a volcanic plug nearby. I missed the turn off and barely made the sunrise. The view was 360 degrees but couldn’t be captured properly with a photo. However I was lucky enough to have rock wallabies for company. They seemed right at home on this rocky hill.

It was a case of fossicking without fortune this time. Perhaps I’ll make a better fist of this next time. For now, it was time to push on. Next stop, Lloyd Jones Weir just outside Barcaldine.