29th Sept, Sapphire, A little fossicking does yer good

OK, we've been on some sites where the morning chorus from the birds has been a bit noisy. This must equate with waking up in football field with a cup final in full swing. I think every type of bird in Australia, lives on this mountain top, Cockatoo's, kookaburra's, parrakeet's, you name it, its here and making sure every living thing in a twenty mile radius is awake. Even a few dead things get up.

Well, a full breakfast is soon cooked and polished off...... (ain't losing no weight out here). We're off fossicking today. Now for those who don't know, fossicking is much like panning for gold, only instead of gold, yer looking for gems and in this case Sapphire's. Well, you can hope cant ya. So off we go down to 'Armfest' to earn our fortune, Anyway, after showing us how its down, we part with twenty bucks for a bucket of dirt, (I never thought I'd ever, ever say that ), do the sieving thing, then do the washing thing. Finally our nice clean stones are on the sorting table. That's one, we're rich, "Na, pet rock",  oh bugger. Theres one, now we're rich, s*@t, its quartz, still not rich, this ain't working out. Hang on, whats that? that's one and that's one, cor, and that's one, hang on mate, cop another twenty and lets have another one of them buckets. Forty bucks lighter and two buckets later, we have a hand full of shiny little stones. We get them looked over and well what do you know? one or two might be worth getting cut, Not a fortune, but what the hell, a bit of fun and we get to keep a sparkly thing. Lin wants to go into town and get a drop of juice, no problem, off we go, hey, while we're here how bout seeing how much to get the sparkly things cut???. (I should have known). In we go and check it out. Well what da ya know, got one about 0.5 of a carat after polishing, so we leave it there to be cut and ready for tomorrow. Great. and we leave with a smile ...
Back at the camp site and its starting to get a little over cast, still its been a good day and the prospect of picking up our little chunk of OZ tomorrow, still hangs in the air. We do a light tea (yea, right) then have a go at skyping the kids, Billee seems to be the only one we can get hold of (poor sod) and we catch up on all the stuff thats been happening while we've been out of signal range, well, at least the stuff she wants us to know. No sooner we say bye to Billee, Rows comes on, so Lin and Row go at it for a while, well, Lins jaw and my ears get sore, so its time to go, bugger me, ten minuits later, the heavens open up and chucks it down for the rest of the night. Im sure that old bat can work voodoo accross the internet.
Right, thats yer lot, gotta type up todays (sundays) bloggy thing.

One of the statues on the site....

More site piccies...

 These little chaps come onto the site to feed at about 4.30pm everyday...

Our home........

The forest behind the tent...

John finds some new friends... these are Lorakeets...

Just liked this poster, as it reminded me of Billee...

Off the site and on to Fossick!!!!

Some of the local mining homes....

and some of the local residents (lol), these have right of way as do all the local horses...

Here we are driving through Sapphire...

and this is where we are going to Fossick....(mine for Sapphires to you lot !!!!)

This fella and his parents run this local mine and fossick centre...and this is a baby joey the mum rescued and boy was he lively...

John makes a start on finding our fortune...go on John you fossick!!!!

and he's off......

The son checks our treasure...

SO off we go to the Stone cutters (Old Mick)   as we have found a party sapphire.... we will let you know the outcome tomorrow once its been cut and polished...and then valued...