Heading east from Longreach towards the coast we passed
through the little town of Ilfracombe where they have the "machinery
mile". Of course I was in my
element, everything from old graders, farm machinery, trucks and of course the
good old steam engines or "chug-chugs" as Judy calls them. There is also an old Caterpillar grader which was used in the second world war in
Darwin. This machine is said to be the first grader to be fitted with a D6 motor.
We loved the old Bedford fire truck which was
still in operation until 2006.
The
heritage committee have done a wonderful job putting all this old equipment on
display.
There are also indoor displays
and buildings built in 1907.
Ilfracombe
was also home to a large wool scouring operation and interestingly enough, our
Governor General Quentin Bryce is a daughter of one of the original Ilfracombe wool
scour former managers.
Another 110 kilometres further east we turned off the Matilda
Highway onto the Capricorn Highway at the town of Barcaldine. Most travelers we speak pronounce this
town as bar-cell-dean but the locals say
it as Bar-col-den so it becomes a bit confusing. Another of those little gems that you find by
chance on your travels.
Barcaldine is famous for the "Tree of
Knowledge". This dates back to 1891
when Queensland's shearers and pastoralists were involved in an industrial
battle that was to profoundly affect Australia's future.
The unions argued that they should have the right to
stipulate who could work in the shearing sheds and that all shearers should work
according to union rules. The employees
argued for "freedom of contract", or the right to engage any workers
on conditions to be negotiated.
After the strike, a large ghost gum which grew for 180 years
beside where the railway station was built in the centre of the town, came to symbolise
this important place in time in Australia's political development. Because of its association with these events
the tree became known as the "Tree of Knowledge"
This tree received the highest possible heritage honour when
it was included in the National Heritage List on the 26 January 2006.
In May 2006 the Tree of Knowledge was poisoned by un unknown
culprit and it never recovered. The
Barcaldine Regional Council received funding from many sources to preserve the
Tree and return it to its site to form part of a befitting architecturally
designed Memorial, which was officially opened on 2 May 2009.
Blackall was the site of the first bore to be sunk in
Queensland, but Barcaldine had the first free flowing bore in Queensland which
was sunk 40 kilometres away at Back Creek in 1886. This bore serviced the railway and the
community that supported it. The
windmill that was used on this site has now been erected in town near the
Visitors Information Centre. The
windmill was manufactured in Rockhampton on 27th September 1917 by Sidney
Williams and Company
As we had spent more time than usual on looking at places
along the way, we didn't quite travel as far as we usually do on a
"travel" day. We stayed
overnight on the banks of a river in the little town of Jericho. As we were both a bit apprehensive to leave
the real outback that we had enjoyed so much, just 1 more night wouldn't hurt.
With renewed energy and the lust for wanting to learn more
about this wonderful country, we continued heading east along the Capricorn
Highway and took a left turn at Anakie, (for those who don't know, we lived
just 10 kilometres from Anakie in Victoria for 15 years) and ended up at
another gem mining town called Sapphire.
We read about the Sapphire Tourist Park Retreat on Wiki
camps. There is an abundance of bird
life and the Rainbow Lorikeets are as tame as ever.
This one left its calling card down the
screen of the computer as I sit here typing this.
A wonderful setting right
amongst the iron bark trees. This park has been really well set up with
concrete pads to park the van beside as well as a smaller pad on the right hand
side so that the van sits nice and level.
A great idea for any caravan park and one that I haven't seen
before. Possibly the best camp kitchen
we have ever seen as well.
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| Rainbow Lorikeets at Sapphire Caravan Park |
As the town name suggests, this area is known for the amount
of sapphires that have been found around this area so we set off in search of
that illusive find.
To gain an in site into sapphire mining we did some quick
research by asking a few of the locals who were only too happy to share their
knowledge and they pointed us in the right direction. Sapphire is a variety of the mineral corundum which
consists of aluminium oxide (alumina).
 |
| Possums at Sapphire Caravan Park |
Pure alumina is colourless, but its occurrence is rare in nature because
various metallic elements occurring as impurities in the crystal give it its
colour. The blue colour stems from
titanium and ferrous iron impurities where as the yellow and green results from
various amounts of ferric iron for the yellow and ferrous/ferric iron for the
green. The red of the ruby comes from
chromium impurities.
While sapphire can occur in a
number of geological situations, most folk we spoke to here have the opinion
that sapphire is thought to have crystallised at great depth in the earth and
have been brought to the surface by explosive volcanic activity. The sapphires were released from the volcanic
material by weathering and erosion and concentrated in various layers of gravel
known as wash, somewhere between 2 million and 10,000 years ago. Wash occurs in one or sometimes two sediment layers around this area,
somewhere between 5 and 20 metres below the surface. There is a mixture of underground and open
cut mining in this area, with underground being mainly the choice of the hobby miners and open cut for the serious
commercial miners.
OK, so now we know the whys and wherefores, all we need now is the
hows.
 |
| Whilloughby |
Tools of the trade are:-
fossickers licence, pick, shovel, method
of getting wash to the surface, (hmm, this maybe where the winch on front of
the cruiser might come in handy) double layer sieve, whilloughby, drum of
water, sorting table, tweezers patience and a big portion of hard work.
Method
Step 1 - Mining.
Obtain a
fossickers licence, find a suitable place out in the bush, possibly in a river
or creek bed. Apparently the above
ground creeks and rivers match the ancient underground water courses. Get out
pick and shovel and dig a hole big enough to work in but not too big as to
waste energy, keep going until you hit the first sediment layer (called wash) at
hopefully 5 metres or possibly 20 metres deep, keep thinking about that
confined space entry course that you did
while working, load wash into good solid bucket, whistle to Judy to winch it to
the surface, empty bucket and return to refill with more wash. Continue this operation between 6 am and 10
am while it is cool enough for Judy to work in the blazing sunshine.
Step 2 - Separating the good (0.00000005%)
from the bad (99.99999995%)
Tip previously
mined wash into the top layer of the sieve, place the top layer on top of the bottom layer of the sieve then place both
layers on the whilloughby and lower into the drum of water. Operate the whilloughby by hand until all the
clay and dirt is washed off the stones during which time the good should have
fallen though the larger openings of the top sieve into the lower sieve which
of course has smaller openings. Remove
the top layer of the sieve and turn the washed contents out onto the sorting
table as in a similar manner as you would turn a cake out of a baking
dish. Go through the contents with a
fine tooth comb and pair of tweezers to pick out your sapphires. What sapphires?? Repeat above process about 3 times until the
bottom sieve is full. With the top sieve
separated from the bottom sieve, operate the handle of the whilloughby in a
short sharp motion for about half a minute.
As the sapphire is the heaviest stone in the sieve, they will all fall
to the bottom. Turn the bottom sieve out
onto the sorting table and whallar, there you have your sapphires if you are
lucky and have dug your hole in the right place.
OK, sounds easy until you try to dig a hole through
something as hard as concrete, no thanks.
We found a better way.
 |
| "Wash" in the bottom sieve ready to be tipped out |
There is a
company in town who run a commercial open cut mine called Armfest that will
sell you a 20 litre bucket of wash, and included in the price is all the
equipment required to sort the good from the bad.
 |
| Tip the sieve over as you would turn out a cake |
Our first bucket turned up 5 blue sapphires
that they tell us would be worth cutting, how exciting. There was also some red zircon, yellow and
green sapphires but they are only low quality but they will look good in a
sample jar. Black spinel is also often
found with sapphire which we are told will polish into lovely black stones and
are likely to reflect a gold star when reflected in the sunlight.
We were only booked in to stay 2 nights here but had to
extend that out to a week. How many buckets
can we do in a week?!!
 |
| As the sapphire is heavier they fall to the bottom of the sieve |
This is very
addictive, much worse than the pokies. Day
2 we head off back to Armfest with our $20.00 for a second bucket of wash and
another couple of hours of fun washing and scratching through looking for
opal. We picked out a yellow looking
stone with a bit of shine to it and Carol, the lady who runs this operation,
got very excited. Yes we had found a
rare yellow opal that she convinced us was worth spending $35.00 on to have it
cut. Judy couldn't contain herself.
 |
| The stones in the centre are iron stone and sapphire |
Day 3 we went back to pick the cut stone up and
of course we did another bucket. We
found some very nice little blue sapphires that once again were worth
cutting.
 |
| 2 nice blues, the 0.85 carat yellow and a nice party sapphire |
Carol then brought out the cut
yellow sapphire from the day before and it was absolutely beautiful. She said the stone was 0.85 of a carat and as
yellow sapphire sells on the gem fields for $1,000 per carat, we were very
pleased with our find. Talk about luck,
we have done a considerable amount of buckets of wash since, and although we
have found enough small amounts of blue to well cover our costs, there was
nothing more like the yellow found in the second bucket.
Fortunately we have been put in touch with a company in
Thailand who cut and polish lower grade stones at about a twentieth of the cost
that is being charged in Australia.
Rubyvale is another mining town about 10 kilometres further
on from Sapphire, but unfortunately, Rubyvale is NOT known for finding ruby, in
fact there are more records of finding ruby in Sapphire than there are of ruby being
found in Rubyvale. Once again there are
plenty of sapphire miners and jewellery shops to have a look around.
While enjoying the sunshine at Sapphire, we realised that driving all the way back to
Melbourne for the conference at the end of October would be a stupid thing to
do as the weather is just beautiful at this time of
the year with temperatures already hovering around 28 to 30 degrees. We made the decision to store the car
and caravan in Brisbane and fly home in October, so now we have heaps of time for a weeks fishing at the Lake Maraboon Holiday Village.
Fairbairn Dam and Lake Maraboon is 20 kilometres south of
Emerald so only had to travel about 60 kilometres that day, but nice to get
back to the water after 4 weeks in the dry outback country of Queensland.
I was confused about the dam and the lake, thinking that
there were 2 different expanses of water, but it is all one and absolutely huge
at that. The wall and spillway that has
been built to create the lake is called Fairbairn Dam, but the water held back
by the wall causing the lake is called Lake Maraboon, meaning "where the
black ducks fly"
The dam was constructed over a period of 4 years during 1968
and 1972. The main embankment is 46.3
metres high, 823 metres long and 9.1 metres wide at the top spreading to a
width of 314 metres at the bottom. The
concrete spillway is 167.7 metres wide.
The lake itself is 247 kilometres around its shore line when
it is full and covers 15,280 hectares.
Its capacity when full is 1,301,100,000,000 litres. That is a lot of water. Three times bigger than Sydney harbour.
The creation of the dam gave Emerald Shire a stable water
supply which in turn gave birth to a multitude of new industries. Cotton, coal mining, vineyards and citrus
orchards have boomed and further new industries are being created every year.
We were told that the lake has been stocked with
Yellowbelly, Barramundi, Saratoga, Murray Cod, and Red Claw Crayfish are also
abundant in these waters.
We are assured that there are no crocodiles here so we
pumped the Zodiac up and set off for a look.
Unfortunately we didn't find the lake to be as abundant with fish and red
claw as they tried to tell us. We didn't
see any of either but had a great time out on the lake trying. Others were going 10 kilometres up the lake
and they had mixed success, some brought back some red claw and others brought
back a bucket full every day.
After a great week fishing, we packed up our gear and headed
east to Rockhampton, passing through the Blackwater area which is the biggest coal mining area in Central
Queensland. Huge electric trains haul
coal from the mines at Blackwater, through Gracemere near Rockhampton to the port
at Gladstone.
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