Fossicking for Zircons and Garnets

Three big days of getting down and dirty!

After watching numerous YouTube videos on fossicking for Zircons, I thought I had this down pack! Then we got out to the zircon field and reality hit, I had no idea. We had been sieving and collecting these pretty sparkly stones, so I thought we were doing really well, but just to be sure we were all on the right track, I decided to hit up a guy in a hole who looked like he knew what he was doing. He informed us that what we were collecting was actually ‘appetite’, a very pretty green stone, but not actually a Zircon. He gave us a lesson and one of his zircons to help guide us and off we went.

The kids loved digging and using the pick axe, but when it got down to washing and sorting the stones they were no where to be seen. That afternoon we sorted through our dirt and were excited to find a few zircons ( we thought!). The next day we took them back to Collin for confirmation. We had found some! The best on was one Brett had found on the ground at another camp site just going for a walk, apparently is what they call a ‘cutter’ which means it could be faceted into a stone for a piece of jewellery.

With this knowledge and confirmation of what we were looking for, we went on our way fossicking for more zircons.

Unfortunately, I was not quite satisfied, knowing the garnet fossicking fields were only 30kms up the road, I really wanted to go.

So, we got up early on Monday morning and off we went, this time in search of garnets. I had heard these were easier to find. We were a bit more optimistic when we found red specks of garnet all over the ground. So, the digging begun again. The garnet fossicking was a lot more successful than the Zircon fossicking.

Now all we need to do is get some of our gems cut and polished so they look pretty.Read more