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Published: February 26th 2011
Hello family and friends! I hope all is well with each of you wherever you are, doing whatever it is you are doing.
I am sure most of you are eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring. I, on the other hand, am fearfully dreading the arrival of fall. A few days ago I felt as if the winds changed and the air got colder from one minute to the next, which was a phenomenon that marked the arrival of fall at the end of each summer field season I spent at Galore Creek in the north. Bad news bears indeed!
But this last weekend was absolutely beautiful, so Nina and I joined a group of our friends on a camping trip. We left Hobart Friday afternoon with Selina and Dan and drove north through the guts of our island state. Highlights of the drive include me singing my Cockney songs to my beleaguered car mates, meeting William Wallace outside a gas station, and keeping our eyes peeled for IEDs as we passed through the town of Bagdad.
After four hours we arrived at a river in the northeast, where we met one of our friends who did an
honours thesis on the placer deposits of sapphires there. We camped on the bank of the river and spent our time searching for gemstones.
Having a geologist as a girlfriend and geologists as friends has finally paid off! Armed with sieves and pans, we hopped into the river and worked for hours on end sifting through the gravel for sapphires, zircons, and topaz. It was quite the endeavor. As the gems are small, we had to dig through the gravel looking for other heavy indicator minerals that sink within the gravel along side of the heavy gems. After that, it was almost exactly the same as panning for gold. Good thing I learned how to do that when I went on that field trip to Britannia Mine. Go Social Studies go!
After the first 20 minutes, I was worried that I’d not find anything, but in the end we did not come away empty handed. Nina and I combined for a total of 65 sapphires, 45 zircons (some of which may be rubies but we can’t tell the difference (bad geologist girlfriend!!!!)), and a handful of topaz gems, although most are pretty small.
It was great to
experience the thrill of finding these small stones amongst all the gravel. The more you worked, the more you found, the more you got addicted to the whole process. I felt like a prospector in the goldfields of the 1800s, and I hopefully looked just as grizzled.
So that just about covers this past weekend, which has been the highlight of the last few weeks here. I’ve also been out sailing on a tall ship named the Lady Nelson, and I will hopefully become a crew member of it in the not-to-distant future. There has also been a ton of festivals in Hobart recently, so there is always something to do. I’m quite fond of this little town I’ve managed to find myself in.
Besides that, life has been a bit slow and relatively uneventful as of late (no complaint), although I finally got a relief teaching job here. Unfortunately for my bank account, I haven’t been called in yet. I guess teachers’ antibodies are nice and strong at the beginning of the school year (that right, the school year just started here 2 weeks ago).
But I don't want to end this blog on a dreary
Bagdad, Tasmania
They spelled in wrongnote, so I will end it with an odd anecdote (that rhymes). The cheese here in Australia comes in two flavours; tasty and extra tasty. So if your cheese isn’t tasty enough (and we all know how often THAT happens), you’ll know what to do.
And that’s the way it is, Saturday, February 26th, 2011.
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Wenny
non-member comment
your new career!
I am imagining the riches that will accrue when you sell your gemstones. You'll be able to retire from teaching before you ever actually have to work a day! xoxox w