The Queensland Sapphire Gemfields

The Sapphire Gemfields is part of the Queensland Central Highlands Sandstone Wilderness Area.  This region contains some amazingly beautiful country, not the least being Carnarvon Gorge which we visited last time.  But this time we weren’t here for views, bushwalks and stunning scenery.  No, this time we were here for the bling.

While we had seen super large mining across the coal regions of NSW and Queensland, and of course had toured the Superpit in Kalgoorlie, this time we wanted to experience a totally different way of mining with a bit of fossicking thrown in to boot.  We were here in Sapphire and Rubyvale to learn about gem mining.

Sapphire Caravan Park

 

Firstly can I talk about our caravan park – we loved our stay at Sapphire Caravan Park.  It is important to note that as we have come north the temperatures have risen, and of course we expected this, but not quite to the level we were getting. We were here in a heatwave, the mercury (should they be using it in thermometers) was bubbling away.  Since we left Goondiwindi the temps have climbed from the mid 30s and now most days are up or over 40.   So the two things we totally loved about this caravan park – the shade and the pool (ok the views, the friendly staff and the space also helped).  The Gemfields area does not abound in shade, it was dry, hot and dusty while we were there.  This made our camping spot even more beautiful as it was a shady, green oasis in the heat.  
 

The rest of the caravan park was really nice as well.  The buildings (many made from the billy boulders which are a by product of the mining process around here) were lovely and the mezzanine deck for eating and drinking was really cool.

There was bird and wallaby feeding every evening about 5. 

As it was Queensland school holidays there was a group of kids that had met in the pool and played with each other over the next few days.

The Gemfields

Sapphires were found here in the 1870s and by 1890 commercial mining had begun in what was to become Sapphire.  Mines were dug by hand using picks and shovels.  The peak of the Australian Sapphire industry was in the 1970s with Australia producing 80% of the worlds sapphires, but by the 1980s increases in supply from Asia and Africa caused a downturn in Australia which continues until today.  This has resulted in the development of an active tourist industry based on fossicking and hand mining. 

Miners Heritage Walk-In Mine – Australia’s Largest Underground Sapphire Mine Tour

Seems the smile muscles are starting to work better!

What better way to understand mining than to do a mine tour.  There are a couple in Rubyvale but on recommendation from our caravan park we chose this one.  This is one of those stories that shows that mining tourists can be more profitable than mining gems.  The mine tour was built on an existing sapphire mine that wasn’t producing all that many gems.  Its owners decided to extend the mines tunnels and run tours instead. 

Don't think this is the original owner but you never know, maybe they preserve well underground.

The tour explained how sapphires are mined both in mines like this and through machinery mining on the surface (although compared to the Superpit the machinery is somewhat small).  The commentary gave us a good understanding of the conditions early miners faced and also what sapphires in the ground look like.  We also came to understand the difference between hand miners and machinery miners and all this lead us to an understanding that what we really wanted was to have someone else dig the soil and rocks out of the ground and then let us look for the gems.  Fortunately Rubyvale and Sapphire were full of such places.

 

The boys were paying close attention as this is the part we get to see the real gems in the rocks.

By the way we also found out that Rubyvale got its name because of the red gems found in that area – unfortunately it turned out that these gems weren’t rubies, but red zircons.  But I can understand, who would want to call their town red zirconvale.

Just to show how underground this tour got.  Of course it also meant that the temperature was much cooler than on the surface - nice.

Armfest

Sapphire and Rubyvale are awash with places offering bags of wash for you to fossick through and find your own gems.  The ‘wash’ comes out of the mines (after the large pieces have been removed) but still contains smaller pieces of sapphire and zircons.  Again we went with the recommendation from the caravan park who told us that the Armfest mine was producing good quality wash.  As part of the price for the bag you were also able to use their equipment and they would teach you how to spot gems and make sure that there was nothing left in the rocks you threw out.

I would actually go further than this and say that we also had a high level of enthusiasm as well as support from the Armfest workers.  I know that all of us found this activity much more interesting and fun (as well as hard work) than we thought it would be.

Here are the boys cleaning and sorting their wash into larger rocks and smaller rocks.

Here you can see the different sizes of rocks being washed.

The first step – looking for gems in the big rocks.  Can I say again how helpful the Armfest people were at every stage.

Many of what we thought were sapphires turned out to be rocks, however, quite a number of rocks turned out to be sapphires under more expert eyes.

The HAUL!!!!!!! 

We found a small range of gems in the large rocks, but sapphires are apparently very heavy.  So in the dish of small rocks when you flip it over on the bottom is almost a layer of iron stone (also very heavy) and sapphires.  There they were gleaming little flecks all over the place.  Almost as shiny as the two smiles on two boys faces when they saw that they had found real gems. 

Seriously I was expecting that we would get a bit or two.  In two bags of wash – one for each kid – this is the resulting haul, so much more than expected.  Not only did the Armfest people help us get these gems they also helped us determine which ones were better quality and actually told us how we can get these cut and polished in Thailand for a very reasonable cost.  As I write this blog post, our few gems are winging their way north.  I will try and remember to take a before and after picture and add it to the blog when they return.  Apparently it can take 2 – 3 months, but as they have been millions of years in the making that is really very little time at all.

OK these are the not so good ones – labelled show and tell by Armfest.  But they are sapphires and what you can see has come from each kids wash - more than we expected.

Here are the good ones from Mr L – we won't send all of them to Thailand just the biggest and best.  This also shows you how varied the colour range of sapphires in this region is.

Mr Cs haul, with his sapphires on the left and on the right we have bronze stars (yep glad there were experts around to spot these they still look like rocks to me).

I must admit I found this to be a lot of fun and would have been quite happy to do another bag or two to see what we would find.  In that I could see why people lived here in the dry and heat, digging through the dirt, sifting it by hand,  sorting through the mud and sand and rocks. The thrill of finding even these small stones, I can imagine the thrill of a big find would be very exciting and possibly addictive.

Pats Gems

The other thing that you can say about Rubyvale and Sapphire is that there are some amazing characters living here – and this is refected in the wide range of businesses.  We experienced on such place Pats Gems – a fossicking ground and wash bag providers by day:

And a retail outlet for jewelry and artifacts as well.  But also a café and on Friday nights a homemade pizza joint.  We had a lovely family dinner of pizza, garlic bread and icecreams in the eclectic and interesting surrounds.

Markets galore

We balanced out our tour and fossicking time with some retail therapy as well.  In the main season both Rubyvale and Sapphire run weekend markets.  We caught the very last Rubyvale market for the season on Saturday and then on Sunday discovered that Sapphire had its own market as well.  We managed to pick up a range of interesting items and the boys bought a few gifts and new fidget spinners (as if having 3 already wasn’t enough).

We had to extend our stay at Sapphire as even when you holiday you still need GPs and car repairs (actually quite a bit of the later as you end up doing long distances when you travel around Australia).  Mr L had broken out in a rash that was spreading quickly (turned out to be nothing to worry about just needed a cream).  Also we had already chipped the windscreen and had problems with the car heating and the aircon working (difficult to manage in the very hot days).  So on our last day in the Gemfields we went to Emerald, saw the GP first thing. Then David dropped myself and the boys off at a café to have some brekkie and then walk to the pool as it was going to be 42 again.  He stayed with the car at both repairers and then picked up three very prunified swimmers before heading back to Sapphire for our last evening (yep even after around 5 hours at Emerald pool, the boys still wanted to hop in at the caravan park pool, mostly I think to play with their new found mates).