1 September 2012 - Anakie Gemfields Caravan Park, Central Highlands, Queensland

We have spent a lovely day exploring the Gemfields area making up for our lack of excitement yesterday. I hung yet another load of washing out in the wind this morning before we headed off twelve kilometres north to Sapphire. 

Here we called in to a market where we were enticed to buy yet another book for our ever expanding library and encouraged to buy a couple of old second hand bikes that had been modified with biscuit tin lids to replace the broken plastic components. Given that we have decided that any bikes that might be purchased will have to ride on the landcruiser roof rack, unsophisticated models such as these might well be just the ticket. We told the keen vendor that we would discuss the possibilities and might call on our way back. We did not, but then the market was well finished by then. A little further on, we stopped at the general store and put our name down for the weekend newspaper then continued on the six kilometres further to Rubyvale to justify our effort in coming this way off our track.

The gemfields cover ninety square kilometres of one of the world’s most significant sapphire bearing grounds. The population is made up principally of fossickers who have staked their claim of 900 square metres and live in shanties or their caravans that once took them gypsying about the country like yours truly. They pay their rates and nothing else, and live in their primitive conditions mining as those who came 150 years before; mechanised mining is only allowed on the leased mines, of which there are only two. Some of these claim holders we spoke to this morning arrived back in the 1970s and are still here. It is just as well we are intending to move on tomorrow morning or we too might be captured by the odd charm of this area.

At Rubyvale we wandered about the market there and engaged in conversation with several rather weird and wonderful people. One middle aged woman adorned with facial steel, a Mohawk haircut but a Maori koru shaped through the remaining bristles on one side of her head and a whole jeweller’s shop of rings on one hand, tempted us with her mess of wares, none of which appealed. Another older woman did indeed have some lovely jewellery for sale, all made from gems found locally. Sadly her husband had recently died and she was in the process of selling up her chattels before moving to the frosts of Canberra. Given that these people own little, are not tenants or freeholders, there is little to sell or move but the accumulation of life’s bric-a-brac. Another chap was desperately trying to sell the last of his gems as he wanted to set off and join the grey nomads. We advised that he just had to set a date and do it or otherwise the right time would never come.

Fossicking for sapphires

There are two mine tour type tourist attractions in Rubyvale and I thought we should fork out and do one or otherwise we would leave the area having been short changed on the offerings. The first we checked out was so quiet we suspected there must be something wrong with it, so we headed off to The Miners Heritage which advertises itself as being Australia’s Largest Underground Sapphire Mine. We took the tour through four hundred metres of tunnels fifteen metres under the earth and learned much about the history and processes of sapphires. We were so taken with it all, we purchased a bag of dirt and rock and spent an hour or so in the blazing hot sunshine fossicking through this on site. We had paid for the upgraded version of dirt which had a polished sapphire planted in it, however we did also find a small but lovely zircon and several very small emeralds which we might well have cut and polished at some future date.

Sunburnt and satisfied we headed back to camp, stopping at Sapphire to pick up the newspaper and drove on through the hillocks of tailings and the small billabongs which are simply rain filled mined holes in the ground. Back at camp we sat under the awning and enjoyed the bird feeding once more but this time from a distance. Several caravans have arrived in the last half hour and we are lamenting the lack of privacy, but then this is a caravan park after all.