THURSDAY 8 JULY     GEMTREE

We had to be at the Office for our tour by 8.45, so it was up at 7.30 for us.

The fossicking tour involved a convoy drive out to the zircon field, so we drove Truck to the Office. There was a limit of eight vehicles for the tour.

We had to line up at the Office to pick up our equipment for mining – sieves and containers of water. The Gemtree operators have “permanent” digging areas reserved at the Mud Tank Zircon Fields, about a 15km drive away. We convoyed east on the Plenty Highway for about 8kms, then turned south and followed a pretty good dirt track south for about 7kms.

We gathered around and were shown what to do: dig dirt and gravel, dry sieve, then wet sieve twice, with sieves of two different coarseness. The zircons are found in gravel layers, not too far down, it seems. There is also a lot of apetite – a yellow/green coloured stone that is soft and of little use. Just a distraction. The zircon is of variable colour – mostly a pinky brown. We were told that it cuts, or facets, like diamonds.

There were several partly dug holes in the Gemtree area, with big sieves set up already. We went to work in “our” hole. We seemed to find quite a few pieces, but most looked flawed and cracked.

After we had worked through the morning, the Gemtree people departed, but we were allowed to keep going if we wished, with the proviso that their gear be returned when we went back.

We ate a very quick lunch that we’d brought with us, then kept working until 3pm. It was quite warm out on the diggings, with no wind of any note. Maybe winter in Central Australia is over?

Before leaving, we did a quick driving explore of the diggings. There were several lots of fossickers camping out at the diggings. But there are no facilities or water out there, so it is rough camping. We decided it was much better to be at Gemtree!

There is an active open cut mine encroaching on the zircon field, where they are mining vermiculite for building with and for potting mix. Hope it doesn’t totally take over the diggings!

Back at Gemtree, we returned the gear and took our stones in to the shop, for sorting. That service is part of the tour. We had four stones worth cutting – 3x4mm and a 4.5mm one. They seemed to think that was OK.

Then we hit the showers, to clean off the dirt. It is a very dusty and muddy pastime, fossicking here. The showers were lovely and warm and most welcome.

We had the last of the vegie soup for tea, followed by pizzas that I assembled on big rounds of Lebanese bread: one potato and garlic and one tomato, capsicum, ham, olives and cheese. Very nice they were, too.

We sat out again, after tea, by the fire, star watching for a while, then had an early night – we were tired! The silence at night, out here, is wonderful.