While the Queensland floods have been a living nightmare for tens of thousands of people, there is one group that has been absolutely revelling in the aftermath of the devastating rains … the gem seekers!
Apparently, eagle-eyed fossickers have been rushing to the gem fields in central Queensland eager to be the first to spot the newly exposed treasures. The Brisbane Courier-Mail reports that the fierce floods cleaned out creek beds and gullies in the gem towns west of Emerald, and treasure hunters are descending on the towns of Rubyvale, Sapphire, Anakie and Willows in record numbers.
Pat Vine who has run Pat’s Gems fossicking park at Sapphire for 34 years said it had fuelled “a mini gem rush”.
“There are so many people just going down into the creek and digging,” she told the Courier-Mail. “They’ve been finding that many sapphires . . . I heard one fossicker collected a kilo of them.”
Wow!
While the massive amounts of rain experienced in Queensland over the summer have flushed the normally dry waterways and brought sapphires to the surface, in normal times even a few specks of rain are appreciated by fossickers who then find it easier to see the object of their heart’s desire glistening in the sunshine. Of course, fossicking is an enormously popular pursuit for many grey nomads as they meander around the country in search of adventure and new experiences … and it can also be a lucrative one.
