Today we’re about to do something on our list of adventures. We’re going to strike it rich in the Outback Gem Fields!

Australia has many mines and is well known as a major producer of coal, copper, gold, uranium and opal. Lesser known, though, are the extensive gem fields and one of the biggest is right here in Central Queensland.

We’re currently in Emerald and you’d expect the town to be named after, well, Emeralds surely. Sadly that’s not the case but the neighbouring townships, or rather settlements, of Sapphire and Rubyvale are more descriptive of their origins… or are they? Things are not quite what they seem out here.

There’s Anakie out here

The gateway to the Gem Fields is via a township called Anakie. Or rather the crossroads at Anakie where a sculpture has been erected with coloured elements to represent the multitude of colours that the gems here take on.

Just to the north is Sapphire and for once it bears the name of what can be found here. First discovered in a creek in the 1870’s, high quality sapphire gems have been mined here ever since. And here too in the Gem Fields are seven sites that the Australian Government have allocated for treasure hunters to try their luck at fossicking for valuable gems. All that is required is a license, a spade, a filter, water and time – as much as you can bear in the blazing summer heat.

Formed in Volcanoes

A cooling process deep within a volcano allows the minerals that produce gems to crystallise. Then, over a period of millions of years, the volcano is eroded by the elements depositing the hard crystals in a sand/pebble mixture known as ‘wash’. In places the wash is exposed in creeks, as was the case with the first sapphire discovery, but mostly the wash is buried by subsequent rock erosion and the only way to access the gems is to dig.

Sapphire and its surrounds are peppered with mounds of dirt from claims that have been mined and the process is still continuing today. Anyone can stake a claim to mine on a commercial basis – if you have the money. A license, a bore drill, washing machinery, mining tools, your white claim marker post and a large pair of brave trousers are required. And the only way to determine if you are going to find anything is to drill a narrow bore hole and look at the dirt spoil for telltale signs of the ‘wash’. Once you find it it’s time to climb down the bore hole and start digging outwards.

Many of the miners make a living from selling cut stones from their mines and there are many shops along the road through Sapphire to explore. We had read of a ‘walk-in’ mine open to visitors in the next township of Rubyvale. But first, time for a coffee.

If you are ever in the area drop by Muggachinno’s cafe on Keilambete Road. It is a little green oasis of treasures serving Merlo coffee with a side measure of port and the best Austrian cherry strudel this side of Austria.

Miners Heritage Walk-in Mine

The Miners Heritage mine provides easy access tours around a once active sapphire mine. Originally opened as a tourists and working mine, successive governments and red tape have restricted the mine to tourists only for ‘safety reasons’. On a positive note it means the mine tunnels are big enough to walk through without being on your hands and knees like the miners.

The guided tours are a must and the knowledgeable guides will take you down to a depth of 17-metres along a dusty path beside the crumbling tunnel walls. Don’t be alarmed though, the tunnels are regularly inspected and, as the guides say, if it wasn’t safe they wouldn’t be in the mine themselves.

Several tunnel offshoots show rough sapphires that are still embedded in the wash and the guides point these out as well as some less obvious ones. A short video explains the process of mining through to a polished gem. So much work and no guarantee of finding anything at the end of it. But it’s the chance of the next bucket bearing your retirement fund that keeps you going.

The tour takes in 400-metres of the mine altogether at a depth of 17-metres, which doesn’t seem that deep until you take a look up one of the original bore shafts. And at the end of the tour a visit to the gem shop may tempt you to buy a piece of jewellery for your loved one or a gem stone to set in your own design. We bought a bag of dirt instead. Not that that is a bad thing. It is guaranteed to contain a cut gem and the possibility of many more sapphires or zircons… but you have to work for it.

Outside the mine is an area set aside for fossicking – the process of extracting gemstones from the wash. We were shown how to filter out the larger waste rubble and then wash the remaining smaller stones, much like gold panning, before tipping the remaining stones onto a drying bed. Here we manually pick through the hundreds of small stones looking for the ones that shine. And after a few minutes we started finding them. We’re rich!! In all we had found 17 rough sapphires of various colours and four zircons. Total value? Well, nothing really but it was great fun.

Where are the Rubys?

Well, as mentioned, not is all as it would seem. The first discoveries at Rubyvale later turned out to be red zircons and not rubys as originally thought. And would you really want to call a place Zirconville?

The Black Star of Queensland

The world’s largest Black Star sapphire, the Black Star of Queensland, was discovered right here in Rubyvale by 12-year old Roy Spencer in 1938 who noticed the interesting black crystal in a pile of wash that had already been examined. He showed the crystal to his father, a pioneering miner in the gem fields, who dismissed it as just a black crystal of no value. It spent the next decade as a doorstop before Mr Spencer, the father, realised sapphires could indeed be black and worth a fortune. It weighed 1,156 carats. It was sold in 1947 for the then princely sum of $18,000 dollars and made its way to America. It was then cut and polished and valued just two years later at $1-million dollars. The Star of Queensland was recently offered for sale with a reserve price of $88-million dollars.