Adventures at Reddestone Creek.

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Day 64

Again I am forced to make handwritten notes as the laptop is still intermittently playing up. Fortunately Helen and Robin here at Craigieburn Camp Site in Glenn Innes are more than accomodating in allowing us update the blog using the pc in their office. However we are having some problems with photographs.

Today we drove out to Boolabinda Homestead on Bullock Mountain as I wanted to do some fossicking and as we had already tried a reserve that was open to the public at Glencoe, it was so overgrown Andy was concerned that if you went through the long grass to the waters edge one of us was bound to get bitten by a snake and with my track record it would have been me!

We turned the truck around and drove back through Glenn Innes and on to Boolabinda.

Boolabinda Homestead is 11km from the bitumen road, access is via a very dusty track. As soon as we pulled up, "Dr Doolittle" got out of the truck and proceeded to make friends with Josie the donkey and her horse friends that were basking in the sunshine by the gate as I went to the office to find out about the fossicking.

Sylvia is very helpul, I sign the disclaimers and pay the fees for me and Andy to go onto private land in order to fossick in Reddestone Creek. Sylvia tells me that she is from Hastings and still has a house there, she is originilly from Chester and moved to Australia 8 years ago to be with Les her partner. They knew each other when they were 16 years old and circumstances made them lose touch.

Les appeared and Sylvia asks him to give me some tuition on fossicking, he asks if I need any equipment but I tell him that I have both sieves and a shovel that Andy bought me for christmas.

Here we are looking for Sapphires, now if you think that you will go out and suddenly strike it rich, it is hard work and not that easy. Sapphires are there but you have to know what you are looking for and big finds are not that common. Les tells me that it is addictive, when you find one Sapphire you just want to keep on going. Sylvia had shown me a 12 carat (yes 12 carats!!!) Sapphire that I am sure would scrub up nicely into a ring.

Les directed us down a track and to Reddestone Creek, off we set down to the creek full of hope - well I was anyway!

Les Beeching is one of the £10 poms a very quiet and unassuming man, however underneath this exterior is a hidden treasure. Who we can only liken to a man we once met in Canada (Harry Bell). These people are hard to find and when you do they touch your soul. Arriving in Australia the day before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon in July 1969, and in fact watched the moon landings through a shop window in Melbourne.

A carpenter by trade, he came over and could only find work as a labourer on a building site, however within months he was soon running his own jobs.

Andy asked him how he came to be at Boolabinda, he said her first came here fossicking and eventually bought the property off the previous owner. Boolabinda is 1252 acres and 1 ½ kilometres to his next door neighbour. Les was a real treasure who knew all about astronomy, the wild animals, the wilderness. We politely ask Les if he had electricity as it is so far from the main road, he said that he had. The previous occupier used to run the site on a generator set and used to turn it off at 10.00 at night. You can imagine how dark it would be out there, there is no light pollution whatsoever. This is probably where Les got his knowledge of the night sky from.

We found a spot by the creek, oh yes, after checking for snakes. Les told us that the snakes here are Red Belly Black snakes, they keep the brown snakes away and for this reason Les likes them. Red Belly Blacks are venemous but they will not kill you and are non agressive. All the same we approach the terrain with care.

Andy shovels and I sift in the creek, just looking for that one glint of a sapphire. There is a knack to it, I am sure it will get easier. Good job I did not come to Australia to make find my fortune fossicking as I am not finding it here. I did not find any sapphire, just Black Spinel and Quartz. Black Spinel is often called Black Diamond, though it is a gemstone in its own right, however the presence of Black Spinel dictates the presence of Sapphire (I am sure any geologist might be able to explain why and how).

As we were fossicking, Les came down to see how we were getting on and asked why we picked this particular spot. We said that it was easy to pan from and other people had been digging here so we thought it a good spot. However he suggested looking elsewhere, we followed him further up the bank about 20 metres away and proceeded to tell us that in a wet summer the river would run about 3 metres higher than it is now and showed us where the rain water would wash the stone from the ground leaving gem 'wash'.

We did another sieve full, however to no avail. Given a bit more time and practice I am sure that we will hit "pay dirt". We had fun all the same, we will return again to look for that elusive gem.

As the Boolabinda Homestead is so far from a main town the Australian Government saw fit to compensate properties such as this, with a broadband connection via a satellite in a low stationery orbit. Andy was fascinated by this and asked if Les had an email address, which he did and we would like to keep in touch with him and hope that he reads our blog.

Saturday was race day in Glenn Innes, the one day a year that the Jockey Club puts a fixture on. Glenn Innes is a town of 10,000 people and it gives them the opportunity to dress in their finery and go to the races and lose or win a fortune or just have some fun.

Getting back into town I said to Andy "we will be right in the middle of race day traffic as it is going home time". But no! The town centre was as quiet as a Sunday afternoon when all the shops are closed, there is barely a soul around except for the one Police Car on speed patrol and some chaps who had dug up part of the high street, the one road that we actually wanted to drive down.

Back at the campsite it had started to rain so we battened down the awning and Andy cooked the remainder of the chicken curry that we froze from the other night. I was feeling absolutely shattered and ached from my adventures at Reddestone Creek.

Love & Kisses
The T's on Tour!

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Photos

Fossicking
Caroline fossicks at Reddestone Creek.

Reddestone Creek
Beautiful Outback scenery

There Must be one in here somewhere!
Looking for that elusive Sapphire

Smiley Sapphire Faces
No gems in here, but what a great experience.

Les & His Toyota Ute
This is Les Beeching an original ₤10 pom.