Weather has a lovely chill in the morning and warms up nicely, not too hot - perfect
Sapphire , Ruby Vale and Anakie is dry , flat and resembles in parts of a war zone, the houses are tents, corrugated sheds and caravans joined together with signs claiming mining rights literally in the back garden!
Booked for two stayed four, arrived minus a number plate but everything else all in place.
Darell and Victoria from Yorkshire own Sapphire caravan park , set in the dry dusty outback bush the site had a real bush camping feel about it , people buzzing around hoping to find the big gem.
The bush surrounded each camp with main buildings blended into the landscape , exterior walls lined with stone , French doors giving it a mountain lodge feel , recycled iron wares , rusted mini trucks and the windmill could be heard pumping water round the fish pond. A retreat and relief from the battle zone outside the gates.

Fossicking
Never done it and it’s extremely addictive!
You have 2 sieves with different size grills, you pour a little of your wash (bag/bucket of stones ) into your sieve, shake of the dirt , dip it into the water and drain , then if you go with a pair of tweezers looking for your retirement stones! If only it was that easy!
What did surprise us was how many different colours of sapphire there are, pink, red, green, yellow, brown, black! Tiny little gems that if you put on your mobile phone the light shines straight through! We spent hrs looking through dirt and oh what fun we had! We collected a fair few sizes , are they worth anything? Well? I have no idea but doubt it very much, we shall be sending them off to a Australian company in Thailand to be cut and polished and some day and hopefully create a piece of jewellery or something that we can look at to remember those fabulous memories created in the dust and dryness of the outback of central Queensland.Read more