We woke in quiet old Sapphire to an impressive morning chorus from the locals. Their were flocks of carellas (grey & pink parrots), lorikeets, cockatoos and guinea fowl squawking from the powerlines, trees and finding breakfast amongst the vegetation around Pearl. The kids did some school work then we set off for Rubyvale to look for precious gems! We made our way to Miners Heritage where we were given 2 buckets of wash and shown how to shake, wash and fossick for gems. This was fun for everyone and a lot more productive than we had anticipated. Everyone ended up with a few sapphires of various colours and Tom found one that was of good enough quality to be cut and polished. We went about 18 metres underground for a tour of the mine here (which is the largest of the underground sapphire mines in Australia). It was very interesting and we were able to see some reasonably large sapphires and zircon stones in the walls of the mine. After the tour and a coffee we headed northeast - following our noses back to the coast. The road took us through some great Aust
ralian outback an
d we saw huge cattle stations with plenty of Bos indicus cattle (the ones with the big floppy ears and lumps on their withers) and the odd red kangaroo. There was oodles of roadkill with far too many dead roos, a wild pig and as a special treat for the boys in the van - a snake!! Yeehah, this proved extremely exciting and we slammed on the brakes did a quick uuey and poked and prodded a freshly killed Eastern Brown (3rd most veno
mous snake in the world). It was about 2 metres long and much bigger than the specimens we had seen in the zoos. We all had a 'feel' before Dad picked it up and removed it from the road. With much abuzz we headed off up the road for a few hours, through more outback country and past a few open pit coal mines (very ugly scars on the landscape). By nightfall the country had changed remarkably and we were back into sugar cane country surrounded by tropical forest. We finally hit the coast at Sarina beach and went to sleep to the sound of the waves. Nice!
We woke in quiet old Sapphire to an impressive morning chorus from the locals. Their were flocks of carellas (grey & pink parrots), lorikeets, cockatoos and guinea fowl squawking from the powerlines, trees and finding breakfast amongst the vegetation around Pearl. The kids did some school work then we set off for Rubyvale to look for precious gems! We made our way to Miners Heritage where we were given 2 buckets of wash and shown how to shake, wash and fossick for gems. This was fun for everyone and a lot more productive than we had anticipated. Everyone ended up with a few sapphires of various colours and Tom found one that was of good enough quality to be cut and polished. We went about 18 metres underground for a tour of the mine here (which is the largest of the underground sapphire mines in Australia). It was very interesting and we were able to see some reasonably large sapphires and zircon stones in the walls of the mine. After the tour and a coffee we headed northeast - following our noses back to the coast. The road took us through some great Aust
ralian outback an
d we saw huge cattle stations with plenty of Bos indicus cattle (the ones with the big floppy ears and lumps on their withers) and the odd red kangaroo. There was oodles of roadkill with far too many dead roos, a wild pig and as a special treat for the boys in the van - a snake!! Yeehah, this proved extremely exciting and we slammed on the brakes did a quick uuey and poked and prodded a freshly killed Eastern Brown (3rd most veno
mous snake in the world). It was about 2 metres long and much bigger than the specimens we had seen in the zoos. We all had a 'feel' before Dad picked it up and removed it from the road. With much abuzz we headed off up the road for a few hours, through more outback country and past a few open pit coal mines (very ugly scars on the landscape). By nightfall the country had changed remarkably and we were back into sugar cane country surrounded by tropical forest. We finally hit the coast at Sarina beach and went to sleep to the sound of the waves. Nice!
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