Longreach Evening and Sapphire Mining

(Am catching up with a number of posts all at the same time beginning with "More Cairns.")

At the end of our second day in Longreach and after taking a break from the heat while touring the Qantas Founders Museum, we went for an evening cruise on a nearby river. Finding bodies of water out here of any kind is rather amazing. Essentially every river and creek we saw was completely dry. However, a stretch of the Thomson River holds water much of the time, though it doesn't always flow. So, there are at least a couple companies that offer sunset cruises. We were told too that when heavy rains come (about every 15 years), there can be serious flooding. We saw evidence of this almost everywhere in Australia. Along nearly every road there are signs warning of the possibility of flooding with markers showing water levels when such flash flooding occurs. We also saw evidence of flooding damage in areas where cyclone-related rainfall had somewhat recently caused problems.

But back to our evening cruise. We were supposed to have had a dinner with the cruise, but we were a bit too early in the tourism season, and not enough people signed up for the cruise to enable them to include the dinner. We did have plenty to drink, however, and some fun nibbles as well. ("Nibbles" is the word used here to describe snacks, such as cheese, slices of fruit, crackers, and bits of salami or other sausage.)

Being on the water was quite pleasant, given how warm it had been all day. One other boat was out--a group of six or so young folks having a great time water skiing and dashing up and down the river. We exchanged lots of friendly waves.

The sky became prettier and prettier as the sun descended.

The next day we traveled to the very small community of Sapphire. Along the way, we passed through the town of Barcaldine, where the Australian political Labor Party began. We stopped to glance at the so-called "Tree of Knowledge" near which many of the gatherings took place leading to the establishment of the party. You can read more by clicking here.

We saw a number of these windmills in this region. Of course, I am used to having seen such windmills back home, but these were dramatically larger. There is an enormous artesian aquifer below most of Queensland and the Northern Territories, and this has been critically important to the ability of settlers to establish life in these regions.

I liked this angry-looking "Sheila" who appeared outside the Barcaldine rest stop toilet.

There are several towns located near each other where significant deposits of semi-precious stones continue to be found, including sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. These little towns, now strongly oriented to tourism, are, not surprisingly, Sapphire, Rubyvale, and Emerald. We stayed at a nice camper van park near Sapphire. One of the things you can do here is go to an attraction where you can pick out a bucket of raw material from a mine and then attempt to find sapphires or other stones in it. This fun gentleman, at a mine called Monique's Mine (I don't know if he was Monique or not!), introduced us to the process. You begin by washing material in a pan consisting of two screens, one course and the other finer.

Next, you invert the leftovers from the course screen and sort through it looking for just the right kinds of stones, mostly the dark ones with a translucent hint to them, though sapphires also come in colors ranging from pink through green and blue and to nearly black. He advised us to keep anything we thought might be of interest.

So, here is Kathie starting a washing.

And then she studied and studied the leftovers.

After we finished with these course materials, we inspected what was left in the finer screen. Because sapphires tend to be heavier, they gravitate to the center of this screen during the washing. They tend to be pretty small though and would not likely be pieces you could have cut into gems.

The proprietor examined what we came up with. We did three pails full of raw material, and each couple found an amount equal to about 1/3 of a cup. He threw out maybe a 1/3 more of that and gave us the remainders, mostly sapphires of tiny size, in small plastic bags to keep. Kathie and I found one stone that was a bit larger, maybe the size of a small lima bean. Maybe she will take it to a jeweler when we get home to see if anything worthwhile can be done with it. Otherwise, we will probably distribute the "wealth" to the grandkids as keepsakes of their grandparents' mining expertise.