The Sapphire Hunt

Hello dear blogsters, lots to tell about our adventures in Rubyvale - but first - in my last blog I mentioned that I made some scones on our last night of bush camping. Uncle John captured my great cooking style (sitting in the dirt).... and the results. So here are his pictures to prove that I am the queen of the camp scone! (Well I have to be the queen of SOMETHING). Anyway, here we are in Rubyvale.... looking for sapphires. That might sound a bit incongruous - except that rubies are actually just red sapphires. We have spent the last couple of nights in a lovely little caravan park. The birds here are amazing - there are heaps of apostle birds (like cartoon character birds with their odd, funny behaviour) and beautiful lorikeets. We had some cake for morning tea and the birds came to join us. The birds took a liking to Lachlan's hair - something about it resembling a birds nest I think!

Now, on to the sapphire hunt. We decided to start off by heading to one of the places where you can buy a bucket of "wash" and work through it looking for sapphires. The process involves getting a bucket of wash (which is a heap of dirt and rocks) and then putting it into seives. The seive then goes into a dooverlackie (which none of we geriatrics can remember the name of) and is dunked up and down to wash the dirt off.

After this, the wash is tipped upside down onto a mat for inspection. (This is the moment where I admit that Uncle John - who was my partner- was infinitely better at this than I was ..... I ended up with mud and water all over my face at one stage!) We each had a set of tweezers and looked through the wash for sapphires. With a good wash, most of the sapphires will be in the middle with the iron stone. Pretty much every bucket yielded sapphires. We had an absolutely wonderful time searching for sapphires - and all have come home with little bags of sapphires. Mum and Dad found a beauty and almost threw it out! Danni found a ripper and got it polished and drilled!

The younguns really enjoyed searching for sapphires and even found time for some fun at the silly sign. Dills!

Anyway, that's all for now folks. We are off to Rockhampton tomorrow. For those who know Bethanie - here is a picture of her and Ella Maguire..... she is having a ball in Slovakia.

As a final note, as I write this blog - we have been partaking of a red wine. I had noticed that my glass was emptying rather quickly.... until I looked up and noticed Mum is crissed as a picket. She has been drinking my bloody wine!!!!!! That's it ... its the 12 step program for Mum as soon as we get home... bloody soak!