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......