Fossicking Jealousy

After seeing mum and dad’s Penguin’s posts on fossicking of at Sapphire I was jealous! They were where I had wanted to visit for a long time now! And posting pictures of sapphires they had found.

So…..it was decided we were detouring to Sapphire🤗 and even better mum and dad were going to stay and wait for us.

Two days and 750kms later we arrived at Graves Hill fossicking ground. I messaged Steve Dingle our fossicking friend for some tips and away we went.

After 2 days and sieving numerous buckets of dirt, we were getting very disappointed. We had found nothing, not even a speck of blue.

I gave up and went and bought a bag of wash from a local sapphire miner. It’s not quite the same as finding your own, but as I washed I found numerous sapphires, which started to make me feel better. Carol the owner grades them and teaches you what to look for in a good stone. What was even better was I got a Darren (a beautiful cutter). She called them Darren as that is the guy who cuts them for you. It was 5.6ct and what they call a party stone ( two colours).

The next day, we went to another area for a speck. Brett found a few small ones and one good size.

We all decided to get another bag of wash, mum, dad, the kids and I went into town to wash some rocks. Brett went for another speck. I got another 2 Darren’s and mum got a ripper. Brett came back with a beautiful 9ct aqua green stone. A good day all round.

Whilst we were there we also had a lovely daily visitor, who the kids loved hand feeding and a more timid nightly visitor.

So glad we made the trick down, we got to see mum and dad and find some beautiful gems.

Now to buy a mining lease and move here!Read more