Hi from Sapphire, in the gemfields,

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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 good one back to Keith's brother Dave, at Rubyvale, to put under lights and lens to check. It is a dark blue star sapphire, apparently worth over $200. Dave will cut and polish it and post it back to NZ for us. (He has a 3 week backlog.) Today we are feeling a bit tired after all the hard work yesterday! We went to the sapphire markets this morning, but just a lot of junk! Looked around some more of the interesting shops and galleries here, and got the girls in the family some nice pieces. Sapphire has a 11,000 acre Miners Common with grazing horses, cows etc. Lots of the houses are made from river boulders and bush timber, or are shacks on miners claims. Our friends Zena and Snow Kennedy have a claim here, next door to their friends with a joint construction, and we walked over it and met another of their interesting neighbour, who showed us around his claim, and showed us how he mines. Tomorrow we head west towards Longreach. I thought I'd update this while I have good coverage. It's 26 degrees inside our van, blue skies, lovely here!
Cheers Lynne and Chris

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Photos

Prospecting for sapphires
In the field digging with pick, spade and buckets.

Chris hard at it
Using the pick to break up the soil and stones

The drive in
Rather exciting 4WDing

Snow and zena's claim
A bedroom each side with joint living between with their friends who have the next door claim.

Alf shows us how to find gems
Across the "road" rough track from Snow and Zena's claim, Alf lives here in a caravan.

Lots of flowering borganvillia
Various colours, very pretty here.

Tropic of Capricorn sign
We will follow the capricrn Highway west from here to Longreach.

Sapphire Caravan Park
Lovely park with immacutely kept grounds, only takes 25 vans. Only $20 a day too!

Emerald Painting
The biggest in the world, sunflowers in Van Gough style.

Cotton grows here
Lots of tufts of cotton along the roadside.

Fairbairn Dam
This irrigates the area so they can grow cotton, citrus and grapes etc. The dam was almost full!

Lake Maraboon
Behind the dam, this lake is bigger than Sydney Harbour. This was about 18k south of Emerald.

Emerald Railway Station
The cattle trucks smelt recently used!

Birds feeding
They like our stale bread and water! One even tried to drink my cup of tea.

Comments

[Linda and Den]

Gemtime!
That looks so exciting, can see how you would get hooked! We would like to see a photo of your ring and the gems next time! Great to see you were able to get to see Snow and Zena's patch. Safe travelling.