A rather large drive from Barcaldine and we’d made it into the vast fossicking grounds of sapphires, The Gemfields!  A late arrival lead us to a quick and simple option of camping on a dustbowl of a reserve with some fellow caravans.  As Mark was keen to get a hold of some gems, some researching was done and he found a reasonable looking fossicking tour.  A restless sleep filled with excitement lead to an early 6am rise to see the red skyline as we crawled out of the camper to jump into our mining clothes.  In ragged singlets and shorts, pumped to dig up our fortune, we arrived at the meeting place where we followed our guide Keith to the dig site.  We were quick to discover he was one character of a bloke.

A short demonstration of what to do and we were thrown straight in a hole with a pick and shovel.  We had to dig away the dirt and get down to the old river bed where volcanos, millions of years ago, had erupted shooting various materials (including sapphires).  Here we shovelled the mess into buckets and seived them to a finer rubble.  We then used a smaller seive and put it through a process of washing.  This allowed the heavier material (including the precious sapphire pieces) to move into the centre of the seive.  After flipping it over after a wash we were able to spot if we had any rare and valuable stones in the mix with their glassy edge gleaming at us!

After a solid day (with a smoko and lunch break!) and many buckets washed, we were quite successful with a small bag of treats!  Reaping our rewards after getting our hands dirty, we had them inspected by the professional cutter in town.  He informed us that three were of decent quality each worth approximately $100 after cutting!  Rather tired from the days events we retreated back to our reserve where there were only toilets without showers.  Improvising as we do and being so dirty from a days mining, we filled a bucket with water and had a make shift cold shower to the side of the reserve (we’re sure some caravaners were entertained!).

The next day lead to some pottering around in the various towns of Sapphire, Rubyvale and Anakie to see what they had to offer.  We ended up stumbling across a grave of a humble piano tuner who was advised not to venture out fossicking due to recent flooding.  Nevertheless, his body was found at a later date.  The good samaritans tried to bury him but since the ground was so swampy, the coffin simply floated!  To finally lay his body to rest, they drilled holes in the coffin so it would sink!  Nearly 100 years after this incident, the “Piano Tuner” still had no name. Finally in 1992 his name was discovered and two plaques (a bit of a mix up there) were made for his restored grave.

After this fascinating piece of trivia we left the Piano Tuner to rest and went into Emerald.  After restocking, we took the road sout to soon explore the National Park of Carnarvon…