Midge Point

While we were staying at Cape Hillsborough, we drove to Midge Point to suss out the park and the area. We passed through Calen where the Calen store is. Last time we were here, we watched Dean Luken lift for gold in the super heavy weightlifting at the Olympics being held in Los Angeles.Calen store has not changed since then although unfortunately the prices have. In those days you could buy anything from a rabbit trap through to the wick for a hurricane lamp and that hasn't changed. the photos say it all...Went out for dinner to the local tavern where the menu was all that you could ask for. Chicken seafood was Marg's choice and I went for the Death by Garlic steak with seafood...all delicious.Our W.A. friends drove us to calen again yesterday to the store and then the butcher.On ouir return, we drove out to the failed Laguna Quays project and spoke to a guy at the marina who seemed to know a fair bit about it. The project fell over after spending an initial 400million and what has been done so far is fantastic. It is a great pity though to see 200 self contained, luxury units sitting vacant. Fishing has at least, been  attempted with a similar result to that from Seaforth. Tomorrow we move on through Proserpine to Hideaway Bay, along from Airlie Beach and Shute Harbour. It was described to us as "imagine Airlie Beach without the backpackers." The brochure shows pristine white beaches and boasts good fishing as well. We shall see.

Cape Hillsborough

Cape Hillsborough

After four nights at Cape Hillsborough, we can appreciate what Margs Mum and dad saw in the serenity of the park. It is advertised as a nature park, within the National Park. There is an island just off shore that can be reached via a causeway at or near low tide and people fish the seaward side of this rocky outcrop. Access can be gained and fished for about 2-3 hours either side of the low tide. Small wallabies and scrub turkeys can be often seen making their way around the park. great facilities including a rec room, three amenities blocks and a camp kitchen. We met some swiss people who had used the camp kitchen.This blog is late because there is no internet access in the park or telephone access either. Actually phone access (one bar)was accessed by walking outside the caravan park to a small park/picnic area where you could get that one bar. There was a nightly procession of people walking to that area and using their phones. We met a couple from Perth W.A. with whom we went to the Saturday night Sing-A-Long at the rec room. A group travelling together also brought their guitars and sang all the Slim Whitman hits as well as others.Johnny cash featured well. We had our fish and chips (7.00 each) and stubbies at bar prices and laughed  and laughed over all sorts of things with this new couple of friends. We went to theSeaforth market expecting to stock up on fruit and veg and hopeful of a fishmonger but alas, about eight stalls with a range from clothes, books and the fruit and veg didn't have a great range. There is a council camp near the beach there. fees were $21- no power so the fold up solar panels were out everywhere and only limited water supply. We paid another 14- on top of that and had it all and then some. There would have been 60-70 camps at Seaforth. On our way home we went into Ball Bay where there is another council camp although much smaller. Would have been about 8 camps there again no power, limited water and again $21- per night.After a couple of days fishing at the Seaforth boat ramp from a floating pontoon, I still had not ventured to the island. perhaps next time. Negative result all round. we have decided to move on to Midge Point caravan park. This was from a recommendation from a guy in the Rockhampton park. Our W.A.friends are coming with us.

On to Mackay

Stayed overnight at a small park at Carmila. Left this morning after shaking as much water/condensation from the awning as I could before rolling it away. Park was behind the local 24hr roadhouse and about equi-distant from the railway line. The amenities block was clean and the water "sweet." We didn't hear trains or traffic through the night and so both slept soundly. This morning, took a short drive to Carmila beach where there is a boat ramp and bush camp. We saw a guy with rod and lure in hand heading down to the river where the tide was rushing in. On to Mackay that has grown quite a bit in twenty eight years. Called at the Tourist Information place at City Gates and moved through to find the park. Mackay has developed probably beyond its residential capacity, as have a great number of Queensland towns. Grown from the point of view that units, cabins,flats, and in a lot of cases, any vacant land within that controlled by the caravan parks, are heavily booked by miners/ coal seam gas explorers and, as such, the demeanour of the place has suffered. The large shopping centre at Caneland was busy but as we both said, not a lot of people in the shops....
We both look forward to catching up with another old friend tomorrow and won't be sorry to be leaving Mackay.

Around Mackay

A great washing day today with the sun and a slight breeze means catch up time.I found an aluminium fabricator to put a piece of metal above and below the broken fridge shelf and rivet all together. The ups and downs of queensland roads has caused one of the plastic shelves in the door of the fridge to break. People next door arrived this morning and they are from Hervey Bay. They are on a fishing/golfing holiday and got some nice whiting from the shore near Mackay airport. We saw quite a few people fishing from the breakwater yesterday and not a lot being caught then.Caught up with an old friend today. Lovely to see her again and have a catch up.Tomorrow we are outa here and looking forward to a couple of nights on the beach at Cape Hillsborough or somewhere else, don't know for sure.

A word about pictures

A word of explanantion about the segment on our photos. As we travel, we find these little snapshots of life but we don't know the people or the circumstances. We use our imagination and invite you to do the same. Depending on the individual, your reactions will vary. We will just present them occasionally for your own interpretation and hope you enjoy!

We are also going to add another segment about the people we meet. We are very fortunate to be living this life and finding some amazing characters, renewing old aquaintances and making new friends. Some of these treasures we will share with you as we go along.

Every Picture Tells a Story- An occasional feature

Photo taken at Carmila beach Queensland 19th July 2012.

Wednesday

Two nights in Rockhampton and we are on the move. Yesterday we went to Stockland shopping centre that is built over a river..WOW what a beauty. Girls found Spotlight and we walked around having a good look around the centre. mate needed to talk to telstra about his dead mobile and an 8 year old consultant worked out that it had not died, had a software malfunction that automatically turned this model off, he recharged it and it's as good as new..Drove out to Yeppoon after lunch at the Foodcourt and on to Emu Park. This area is where the Keppel ferries leave from for their trips to the Keppel group of islands. Parks are full, "Like--NO VACANCY" signs out the front. Bloke next to us in the rocky park was told "come back at the end of August"----Nice. More rain overnight that put a big bulge in our awning. That'll teach me for not lowering one of the legs. anyway, all okay. pack up this morning and head North. raining as we left and four more wide loads all with mining equipment heading to Nebo, near Mackay. Stopped at Clairview for lunch in the van, a quick toilet stop and it's still raining. Off towards Mackay but luckily  I booked a site at a small park about 90 klms south of Mackay at Carmila. Luckily, there is no bowls club here or it would be Carmila Park Bowls, wouldn't it? Able to get into a park for two nights in Mackay for tomorrow, we were told that they were also all booked out, mining is an issue here, no doubt about it.

Monday

Time to pack up and leave the Willows Gemfields after two weeks and three days here.The decision to leave was partly because of the weather, you can't dig sapphires with the ground wet, dry is best and partly as our friends had also decided to move towards the coast, as was our intention.It was a pleasant surprise when eight couples came to see us off and say their goodbyes, quite touching. They wished us well and asked if we would be back next year. I don't think that we could dis-count that idea... We paused at Emerald to pick up our wayward mail but was assured it hadn't arrived yet. We headed off for refueling the vehicle and ourselves with a coffee at the big new Big W  complex out the road. On towards Blackwater and on our way we passed several stationery QR trains, both coal and cattle.More coal though. Being in touch by UHF made choosing a lunch stop really easy, our friends had just refilled their gas though, and the smell and sound of leaking gas required some attention. All fixed and on the road again. Not long out of Emerald, we were pushed over by oncoming police car and escort vehicle.(see pic) wide loads like this are becoming more common as "Gina" starts her new mine out at Alpha....Monster trucks..The post office at Emerald rang and asked if we were still around as they had located our mail, Umm NO, please redirect it to Mackay.Arrived in Rockhampton mid afternoon to a park on the North side of town. We were impressed by the vintage architecture that we had seen on the way through town and after happy hour the girls went out and picked up pizza from a nearby Domino's, and that's a whole new story....

Friday

A much quiter day again today from what we are used to here. People have made the decision to leave, because of how wet the diggings are now, and this is the third time this year that rain has delayed their pursuit of sapphire. We have taken advantage of the fine weather and taken down the longest wall of our annexe and packed it away dry. Today was a catch up day on washing, drying and a general tidy up. Our Weber baby q has been cleaned and packed into the car for Mondays departure. It was craft day for Marg today and that feeling of the camp was also felt there with a certain lack of enthusiasm. It's all a bit hard, this leaving. We have met some great people here and that time is soon coming to a close. Always next year, as they say.Weather is also hard. This morning, after a restless, uncomfortably warm night, we woke up to  misty weather and about 19C. and 90% humidity. This improved slightly with a max. of 27.9 and still about 60% humidity.

Town today

Off to Emerald, nice and early, seeing where the water has been across the road in two places before we reach the main road (Capricorn hwy) and further down the road the evidence of where more water has recently crossed the road. Grass rubble on fences that days before were clear, slight gravel washes encroaching on the bitumen all in low lying areas marked by floodway signs and those dreaded, metre markers, some even show two metres.Our mail had not arrived at the Post Office yet, even though sent Postal Express. Looked like a very busy place and found there was 3,700 postal boxes here..WOW, goes right around the building. The Irish Village pub in town was reputed to be pretty good, from the expert opinion around the fire at happy hour. The meals were up to the standard of the reports and we rolled out of there not thinking about tea.A visit to Maccas, updated my e-mails and through Woolworths, a trip to Shell where the diesel is 1.44.9/ltr (a good price considering) and we were off home again.

Its raining, it's pouring..

Well after about two weeks here, the heavens have opened up from the north west and it's been bucketing down for about the last twenty four hours or so. That's put the kybosh on the prospecting and the air about the camp is not too confident. the rain is the third lot that  people have had here and it takes about 3-4 days for the ground to dry out sufficiently to start digging again. As well as that, the tracks literally turn to mud and traversing the fields can be quite dangerous with steep washaways to negotiate as well as the pits from past digging.. The afternoon social get together around the fire has also been put on hold until the weather improves. on a more positive note, before the rains started yesterday, i managed to pull two tiny sapphires from the rubble that i have been working on. This at least confirms that we are looking in the right place and that the methods we are using are starting to work.

Update Friday

Well it's been a couple of days since I have written because we are having such a great time here at the Willows Gemfields in central queensland, despite being tired or more like exhausted from being out on the diggings each day. There is a system involved in this Sapphire hunting. firstly you must pick a spot where the sapphires are, we haven't quite done that exactly right yet, but we are working on it. secondly you scrape the first layer of dirt/stones/rocks from the surface and allow this dirt to dry out before placing it in a number of differetntl graded sieves. This creates a certain amount of dust. next sort the red rubbish (stones) from the rest as they are not what we want, secondly sort any big stonesd from the rest, again as these are not wanted. Next we take the last sieve and dip it into water washing the remaining stones to get the accumulated mud/dust from them. The action of side to side, turn the dish around and more side to side makes a sausage shape in the middle. Sapphires are heavier that rock and work themselves to the middle and underneath all of the other rocks. A quick flip of the dish onto a bag in bright sunlight should reveal the sapphires towards the middle of the pile. The sunlight allows you to quickly identify the sapphires from the rest of the rubbish. Well thats it in theory at least. We have been to Emerald yesterday for a day out in the big smoke. shopping, a couple of op shops, lunch at the Tavern and home again. It's about 100 klms to Emerald. Met a couple from Goornong at the Tavern and a bloke from mooroopna in one of the op shops. Emerald is a busy place being on the road West to Longreach and a large service town for the surrounding agricultural area. Ag is now taking a back seat here because of the Coal Seam Gas research and also the coal mining on a grand scale here.Did I say we were staying for another week, well I just did......

staying tuned

As i said in my previous post, system to this fossicking...... firstly scrape off the dirt and larger rounder rocks on the surface and discard these. secondly , using a pick and shovel, work down to the clay base, in our case about 6-10 inches 15-25cm. This rubble once it is dried is placed through two different sizes of sieve and any large pieces of rock/stone that look red or white may also be discarded. Now we are getting down to the nitty gritty. The remaining stones are then washed in a large bucket with a side to side motion, turning the sieve through 90 degrees to once again wash in a side to side motion. Sapphires are heavier than the rocks and should congregate in the bottom middle of the washed stones, the sieve is then turned upside down onto a sorting table covered in some cloth, hession bag or some surface where the rocks will not fly off when turned over. Any sapphires then should appear on the top, middle of the washed stones. If not, try again and again and again...there is also a system to living here, Sunday is Sapphire market, so it was off to Sapphire for that this morning. An unusual market that has the more usual junk/garage sale types of wares but also a great number of exhibitors selling sapphires and gemstones in all sorts of configurations and prices. You can also purchase the requirements to begin that sapphire hunt yourself with picks, shovels, sieves buckets and also free advice. Then lunch at the next town, Rubyvale. On our two visits there so far, we have been astounded by the style of architecture in the area. The Hotel at Rubyvale does meals as does Poppys cafe on the opposite corner. There is a small supermarket,several gem stores, a strudel house and coffee shops. All around the area are mines open for the visitors to inspect and tour. There are also several places that sell buckets of sand/gravel to wash and retrieve the small sapphire chips or stones for those lucky enough.

The next few days

Sorry about that. Seems that we had a bug in the system that would not allow me to lodge posts. Hope all is sorted now.
The last few days here at the Willows Gemfields has been quite interesting. as  i am known for my understatements, you will know exactly what I mean. this fossicking caper has quite a system to it. firstly, you must locate an area to dig. The choosing of the area is critical as it must have a number of components that already indicate the presence of sapphires. sapphires were created by volcanic eruption and were effectively spat out along with other molten rock and some of which formed into crystals of sapphire, some into crystals of quartz but mostly it was molten rock. volcanic eruptions being what they are, quite violent and the effect would have been felt over several kilometres. The landscape today however, does not necessarily indicate what the area was like then, so where rivers of this molten stuff flowed, may well be hills today as is the case where we are digging. Stay tuned