A fossicking good time

Whist fossicking for peridot, we got the hot tip about Beear Fossicking ground at Moorella. After the fossicking hosts showed us their goodies, we could not resist stopping in ourselves.

We rolled in in the dark! Brett had a doctors app during the day, so we were running a tad late. We could only see one other camper as we rolled in, but in the morning Brett and I were straight out scoping the place out, when we bumped into Lou.

Lou was super keen to give us the run down and show us what he and his partner Wendy had been collecting for the last few weeks. They had some amazing pieces, Brett and I were chomping at the bits to get digging, we mentioned the kids back at the van, but he was a talker ( not a good combo with Brett 🤣! ). Before we knew it he had us over at his massive hole, showing us what it was all about, then he invited us down for a dig! How could we say no 🤷🏼‍♀️. By this time the kids had joined us. Lachlan was super excited to get down the hole, this is what mining was all about! He got his boots, long pants, head torch and pic! He was set. Brax, Lachie and Brett spent a few hours in the hole pulling out stunning gems and geods, while I did some sieving and geod cracking on the surface.

The boys used their muscles to twist and turn the winch and bucket the dirt out of the hole, taking turns being up the top and in the hole. We were all on a high. We could not believe how lucky we were to find Lou and Wendy and how generous they were to let us dig in their hole, teach us how to find these gems and let us keep these precious gems.

Something that stuck with all of us was something Wendy said to the boys when she was explaining the formation of the gems and how special they were, she also said that “ we were the first people in the entire world that has ever placed eyes on that gem, that it has spent hundreds or even millions of years under ground forming and as we pull it out of the ground we are the first people to see and touch it”. We had never thought of this before when we are fossicking, and now our gems are even more special and we feel even more amazed each time we find one.Read more