Blogs from Rubyvale, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

I mentioned in my last blog post how Emerald was in the midst of the largest sapphire gemfields in the world, hence our next place to visit was nearby Rubyvale. After checking in to the caravan park, we headed out to the Heritage Underground Sapphire Mine for a tour, which was very interesting. We booked a Tag Along Sapphire Fossicking Tour for the next day, and followed an old prospector out to a fossicking area, where we proceeded to dig for sapphires. The process was to dig through the topsoil until you reach the shale level, as this is where the sapphires are found. Then fill the large buckets with the shale and dirt, and carry them to the tumbler, which sorts out the large rocks from material which may contain the sapphires. The material is ... read more

Friday 6th Jan Went for a drive to Sapphire and Rubyvale today. Noticed that there was a lot of caravan's and shanty's in both of these places then heard that most of the land is leased for mining and the people leasing the land are not allowed to build permanant structures as when they have finished mining for Sapphires and they return the land back to the shire the land must be free of structures. Did a underground mine tour at Miners Heritage - great tour by a young lady who lives in Rubyvale who came to town with her boyfriend on an around Oz trip to visit family and 5 years later are still there looking for the elusive Sapphire Still very hot - it has been 38-41 degrees most of the time we have ... read more

We are loving it here, an interesting area with lots to see and do, so we have stayed on an extra day. We have visited an underground sapphire mine, and bought a bucket of gravel "wash" to sieve through for a gem. A party coloured sapphire (yellow /green /blue tones) was found worth cutting, along with several smaller stones. I had it cut , polished and set into a ring, which I'm pleased with! Yesterday we went out for the whole day 25k on a drive yourself fossicking tour to a site with an expert miner Keith (a ex NZer), who provided gear and know-how, along with about a dozen others. We dug, sieved, cleaned and sorted with Keith's help t identify sapphires. We got one good stone, and lots of smaller ones. We took the ... read more

We set off to Rubyvale to make our fortune saphire mining. This was a very interesting experience, digging in former river beds hoping to find the big one! It rained really heavily the night before we set off to meet our fossicker expert, good job we have a 4WD- but our boots struggled. The bush was hot, wet but we had a ball, digging, getting in a mess, sifting buckets of much for that little ray of colour. We did find some saphires, which at the time was veryexciting- none proved big enough to show off in a special ring or something? Lots of people were set up for the entire winter, living in tents or camper vans- complete with portaloo on site... read more