It was good to catch up with Judy again - it didn't seem so long ago that Dad and I were staying here. Jude took the next day off work, and took me out to Alligator Creek for a swim., and up to a lookout above the town common. (Much better than Castle Hill) Lib, Ali and Loz arrived at about 8 pm, had showers then we all went out to play pool at the Seaview - a bit of a dive. Loz and I went out to see Nugget and Sarah before they all left, leaving Ali and myself to finish the beers!
Later we met Jude in a Mexican restaurant and had a great night cruising around town visiting a few pubs and clubs.
Early next morning we loaded up Nugget and Sarah, being approached by the same bloke that originally told me I shouldn't be there. He thought I'd abandoned the horses!
Stopping in Mackay to give the horses a walkabout and a drink - which didn't happen as creek we stopped at was tidal and very salty.. .then finally arrived here in Calliope at about 11 pm. We fell asleep once the problem of finding a yard for Nugget and Sarah was solved - although I had to move them first thing next morning. There isn't as much grass here as I had expected, and I still am not sure how long I'll be staying, or what direction I'll take.
30th August
Yet another unexpected turn of events... I was offered the opportunity to spend a week at the gem fields with Jim, Jenny and Jamie. We left in a bit of a hurry since they'd got a call from "Sam" - one of their buyers, who was due to depart soon, and wanted to get some stone before he left. It was a 5 hour drive, most of it in; the dark - the distant lights of the coal mines the only feature i could notice.
I woke the next morning to a dry, disturbed landscape - the little town of Sapphire amid the heaps of rubble and rusted machinery - an air of history, but not permanence.
Jim showed me round the plant - a different formula of familiar techniques- the deposit is dug up using excavators and bulldozers, transported in huge 50 ton dump trucks to a drying pad where it is laid out and ploughed with tractors to dry it. Then it is sieved and put through a trommel to mix it all up and remove the very large rocks (too bad if there's a very large sapphire!) It is then washed through a pulsating jig which settles the dense pieces of sapphire underneath the rest. From here, it is taken back to the house to be separated (using a magnet to attract ironstone) then sorted by hand and graded over a light table.
The next day Jim took me to the lease where the sapphire bearing wash is dug from the ground
- up to 50 feet deep - but nothing could have prepared me for the method used to locate the deposits. All the area on the gemfields has been extensively mined over the past 100 years (hence the moonscape); Jim is reworking a claim, finding deposits that had been missed by accident, or were originally protected underneath a shed, or road, etc. Jim pulled out a pair of wire lengths from the ute, and started divining!!! I couldn't believe it! I'd never seen it done before, but from television documentaries, etc. I was extremely sceptical1 to say the least!
Still, I couldn't explain how those wires bent against his tight grip as he walked over a deposit, then out again as he passed is. Jim's track record is good apparently, with water as well. Who knows?!?
Over the next few days I learnt a large amount; only the tip of the iceberg of course, but enough to understand what the old miners were chatting about, and enough to fuel my curiosity about these glittering little stones. In fact I have learnt a great deal during this trip, not least about myself....
~**~THE END~**~
