There's not much to tell since our last entry, we're still in the gemfields of Queensland, but it's time for another update, so here goes.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at finding some shiny rocks in the designated fossicking areas and in the river, we went with Kathy's parents to one of the many local fossicking businesses to at least try and find some form of sapphire or zircon, so we would know what it looked like when (if...) we came across it. We all went to a place in Rubyvale (a whole 8 km from Sapphire) to a fossicking business run by a bloke called "Bob". Bob lives in a half built house on a mining claim with his own mineshaft sunk down in the backyard. He is a nice bloke who is a real character, beard, dirty jeans, smokes weed, the whole package. The go with these sort of operations is that they dig the "wash" out of their mine, put it in a plastic bucket and then charge the public a fee to sort through the contents of said bucket on their property, using their fossicking equipment. Whatever you find in the bucket is yours to keep, not a bad deal considering the cost is usually 10 or 20 bucks for a bucket of wash, with the potential for one to find a gem worth substantially more than that in the bucket. The "wash" is the term used to describe what is usually a layer of rock that is / was an ancient riverbed. The riverbed contains all manner of rocks, quartz, ironstone, pebbles of all shapes and sizes. When the riverbed had water flowing over it millions of years ago, the sapphires, zircons, garnets etc were caught in the rocks as they sank to the bottom, and so, this is where they are now found, in the wash. Anyway, we went to Bob's and sorted through a bucket of wash, and we found some sapphires. Nothing worth enough to retire on, but some nice coloured rocks at least. It was a good excercise to see how well the gems show up in the seive when you are sorting through the rocks, they stand out a lot better than we thought they would, so we learnt something. The next day, we went back to the creek that runs through Sapphire and did some digging of our own in the creek-bed. We picked a different spot than last time and had some success. We managed to find some nice blue and green sapphires by digging into the creek-bed and seiving through the wash by hand. They are only small gems, but they are gems that we found by ourselves in the creek at Sapphire. Happy campers!! We have been back to the creek again since then and found b***** all, so it really is a luck-of-the-draw thing. The friends of Kathy's parents that have a mining claim started mining for real the other day. We went to their claim and saw how the machinery works at sorting the rocks from the gems. They did find a few small sapphires on the first day of mining their claim, which made them relieved that their claim is not on dud land.

Life around the camper trailer has been as good as can be expected. The caravan park at Sapphire is still quiet, relaxing and cheap place to stay. The Lorrikeets have been coming to the camper most days for a chat and a feed, they will happily sit on your shoulder while you cut up some apple for them. The Green Tree Frogs are out every night at the amenities block and in the laundry. They sit paitiently under the bug zapper waiting for a meal. We can pick them up and they don't care in the slightest. Other than looking for shiny rocks and bumming around the caravan park, swimming every arvo in the pool, interacting with the local widlife, and killing the odd toad, not much has happened.

Last week one of the locals in the caravan park asked if I would like to come for a drive with him to put some yabbie pots in a nearby dam, which sounded like a plan. He drove us out to this dam in his old Patrol ute down a fairly rugged sort of track that got wetter and wetter. We chucked the pots in and had a go at driving through to Rubyvale, but due to the mud filled ruts and the almost bald All Terrain tyres on the Patrol, we backed out and did a U-ie. That night we had 30mm of rain (no leaks in the camper trailer. Yay!). The next morning I offered to take the Pajero to pick up the yabbie pots, given that it has a set of chunky tyres on it now. The trip to the dam was slippery and muddy as a result of the rain, but no trouble for the new tyres. The yabbie pots were empty, so it was boo for that. Deciding that I didn't want the trip out there to be a complete waste, I figured we could see if we could make it through the rest of the track rather than turning around. I was reminded of the rain the previous night, and of how much wetter the track was up to this point, but pointed the bonnet onward anyway. Needless to say, it was wet and very muddy. The ruts were deep and slippery, but the new tyres and the Pajero are actually quite a good team together. We made it through with a fair bit of mud-slinging (momentum is king) and came out at the back of Rubyvale. I was most impressed and now have even more confidence in the Pajero, which will no doubt get me bogged badly somewhere in the future!! It was so much fun that I went back to the park and got Kathy for another go at the track, again without any dramas. Good dirty fun!!

A few days ago we were asked if we would house-sit for a young woman in Rubyvale who is nearly ready to have a baby. It was sprung on us with not much time to think it over, she was going to Brisbane in a couple of days. She has two cats and a dog, and wanted someone to stay in the house and look after them. We said we would take it on for a couple of weeks, it's free accomodation after all. So, Sunday arvo we came out to the house and moved our food and clothes in. As it happened, the house was in need of a good clean before we were staying in it. The fridge was far from clean and the cats have free run of the house, so we scrubbed the fridge and vacuumed and swept everything. We have been here only 2 nights and both of us can't stop sneezing, the cats are staying mostly outside now but their hair and smell is still in here. We can't stay here for a whole 2 weeks and have contacted the woman so she can find someone else. One more night should see us back at the caravan park in our trusty (and clean) camper trailer. Which, by the way, has now got some fantastic large scratches in the paint on the toolbox lid, because the dog, being a kelpie-cattledog cross has been jumping up on the toolbox lid and then up onto the top of the camper for a snooze. Not impressed. Anyway, things like this all part of the travelling experience, or something like that....

Today we went to another fossicking business in Sapphire called Armfest. They have a great set up with a small lake for a bit of scenery to look at while sorting through the rocks. Their fossicking gear is in better condition than most and they have tables to empty the seives onto to look through the rocks. The woman running the place is also a wildlife carer. She takes care of sick and injured wildlife, mainly kangaroos and walabies. At the moment she has a young Grey Kangaroo named Fluffy. He was brought to her almost dead, people had been looking after it and had no idea what they were doing. The roo pulled through (there's some poetry for you) and is now happy mingling with the guests doing the fossicking. Fluffy stayed with us as we sorted through a couple of buckets of wash, even helping by digging rocks out of the bucket and drinking the water in the willobie (A willobie is the device with a holder for the seive, conected to a handle on a spring, placed over a bucket of water. It is used for pumping water up and down through the seive, which washes the rocks and places the heaviest rocks in the middle of the seive). We manged to find a couple of garnets that may be able to be cut into a useable gem and a few pieces of sapphire. Nothing too exciting, but it was worth going there just for the interaction with Fluffy.

We'll see about getting out of this house tomorrow, then probably spend a couple more days at the caravan park with Kathy's parents, before heading north again. The weather has been great here, sun and around 30-32 degrees almost every day.

Let's see if that changes again when we head off...