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| This small mountain was one of the few features along the roadside in the Outback. Boring drive! That's why they have so many signs here that say 'Rest, Revive, Survive!' |
| Erin's Journal for 2/8 to 2/9//03 Queensland Today we'd spent in Sapphire, doing the digging thing. We awoke to hear some pouring rain, which was good for the community but bad for sightseeing. No worries though - we already knew it would be a dirty day, and dressed for mud. I donned my least favorite pair of shorts and an already-stained t-shirt, and we headed out to see Sapphire. First stop was the Heritage Mine, where a good tour is given and the owners were so knowledgeable because they've made a killing there! We were the first to arrive after opening at 9am, and the owner gave us a quick overview on how the gems are found, cut and valued. It was quite interesting, but the tour itself was even more so. With another family of 3 who'd arrived, we descended into the mine, and were shown around the place. Two famously huge sapphires were found here in recent decades, both by people who just showed up for the day to try their hands at mining and found these huge lumps of sapphire! The owner showed us a few sapphires still stuck in the wall, adding that he really wanted to do more digging in those spots! Afterward, we checked out the gorgeous cut stones, and reluctantly left without buying anything. Then we drove to a couple of other places in town that sold cut stones and set pieces, all of which were gorgeous but pricey. We talked to a local in the newsstand/cafe, again impressed with how much this town is like the pop-up mining towns of 1800's California or Denver! Properties are bought there, a quickie house or trailer is thrown up, and the land gets dug up and mined... Needless to say, there were lots of properties for sale in the small town. It is really hard work if you're not a major operation with the big machines. We spent the afternoon at Pat's Gems, doing our own fossicking. We'd get a bucket of 'wash', which was basically a pail of dirt the owners had dug from their property, and then used the sieve and water trough to clean most of the dust off, then sifted through with tweezers for pieces of sapphire. We started getting the hang of it after the 2nd bucket, and ended up doing 5 buckets by the end of the day (5pm). We found several pieces, but none really worth the cost of cutting the stones. We took them along anyway in little baggies as souveniers. Afterwards, we made dinner and had another quiet night doing journals and reading. We'd gotten to take one more bag of wash with us due to a package deal at Pat's, and unwisely sifted it on the table that night. What a mess! Didn't find much, either. Oh well! It was a fun experience. 2-9-03 This morning it was raining cats & dogs again, so we decided to take the longer paved road to get out to the coast. We headed back through Emerald, through much more of the flat Outback country, then started seeing some spiky hills. Finally around noon we reached Mackay, the coastal town where we met up with the highway north again. We decided to keep pressing northward to shorten tomorrow's trip to Cairns, and made it all the way to Townsville, a mere half day from Cairns. By the time we did that, we'd driven almost 800 km that day and were beat. We stopped in at a highway-side caravan park, had quick dinner, and watched Gladiator on our tv that night before bed. |