Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

On the way back South from Cairns decided to take a little detour inland in order to go visit the Gem fileds of Emerald, Sapphire and Rubyvale. Just South of Townsville you turn West and heads towards Charters Towers which is a town left remaining from the days of the great Australian gold rush. For a place in the middle of knowhere it was actually quite pretty with some really nice buildings...

From Charters Towers you head directly South for what seems like forever through the most boring landscape and across the worst roads (which were in fact really badly flooded) before you come to the town of Emerald. Just a quick drive West of here and we arrived at Sapphire which, as the name suggests, is the home of some pretty serious Sapphire mining. So after a nights rest we headed over to a tourist gem fossicking park which for about $8 (3quid, 5EURO) lets you dig a bucket load of Sapphire 'wash' (apparently this stuff hasn't been picked through by the park owners prior to letting toutists have a go....yeah right!). The owner then shows you how to get rid of the smaller particles before washing the stones and with a few flicks of the wrist reveal the 'Shiny Gems'. You then tip the stones onto a cloth covered table before picking through your findings with a pair of tweezers. Its actually quite good fun and surprising just how quickly you get into it and within ten minutes you are so determined to find something that you just start convincing yourself that what clearly is a worthless snadstone pebble is possibly a hidden gem and could be worth something! When you're finished with your bucket load of wash you take your findings into the shop where the owner examines your scraps under a magnifying glass and discards what she 'says' are rubbish before packaging your minute 'genuine' sapphires. Of course she was probably stealing all of our prize findings and keeping them for herself

Once we were done there we took a guided tour of a real working Sapphire mine after which we were convinced that we were'nt about to start new lives here in the gem fileds of Queensland.....