EMERALD AND SAPPHIRE

Emerald is a small town located in the Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia. It has a population of approximately 12,895.  The town is the business centre for the Central Highlands Regional Council and lies on the Nogoa River, a tributary of the Fitzroy River.

 Emerald lies almost 300 kilometres from the coast and approximately 270 kilometres west of the city of Rockhampton on the junction of the Capricorn and Gregory highways. The Tropic of Capricorn intersects the Gregory Highway just north of Emerald.  

Emerald is a pretty town famous for the Big Painting

Also we caught up with this handsome devil.  He is sculptured completely out of recycled motor vehicle parts.  I believe his eyes light up at night.  Spooky!

We needed to stock up with supplies so driving through the town means the weight distribution bars have to come off otherwise they will scrape the heavily angled pavements that Queensland have to handle the large down pouring of rain.

Once we had our supplies it was time to head off to the town of Sapphire to try our luck with panning for precious stones

We were hoping to find the elusive big one just as the story goes about this old timer in Mr Mick Stonebridge.  He died at the age of 91 in this town and whilst his diggings for sapphires could have provided him with a luxurious lifestyle he chose to keep the majority of his finds later established to be worth a small fortune.  Part of his finds included this 195 carat uncut gem.

This fella was no relation...

We decided to camp at the Big Bessie fossicking area to try our luck

The gemfields are scattered with temporary housing which is used for the duration of respective mining leases.  Whilst there is still freehold property in Sapphire there are a large number of leaseholds in and around the town

There are heaps of kangaroos around these parts and we caught a picture of this mother with her baby joey.

Little did we know we had been camped right beside the local rifle range and woke up the next morning to gun shots hmmmm!  Anyways I wasn't scared hahaha.

For a while we watched from a safe distance and the shooters had 30 seconds to shoot the target with 3 shots before the target disappeared.  Glad we didn't camp down the target end eh!

So we tried our hand at digging the dirt in Big Bessie....

Karen decided to try her luck with a dry wash bag, sort of a 'lucky dip'

Where as I decided to have an unwashed bucked.

Well whilst I wasted my time washing and washing and washing,

Karen finds this 2.5 carrot stone in her wash bag!

It is a beautiful 2.5 carrat parti colour, which means it is a stone the shines blue, green and yellow.

At the general store they have what is called a 'Bragging Board' which tells the locals which people have found a lucky strike!

Here is the 'Brag Board'

Wow!  Someone had a 192 carrat stone!

We took our stone to Matt from 'Old Mick's Gem Shop' and he did a beautiful job in cutting it into a perfect stone to place it into



and here is the stone that he set in a beautiful ring

and we took it back to show Carol, the owner of Armfest.

I thought it would be a good idea to grab another bag!

Karen with the jewel on her finger

Much to the amazement of the locals

And this is one local light on her feet!

Say what!

So now it is time to hit the road and head for another beautiful part of Queensland in Mt Britton in the Homevale National Park.

So it was time to hit the road!