Fossicking

Whilst we were in Emerald we stopped by the local gem fields in Sapphire and Rubyvale (can you guess what kind of gems you can find there?) to try our hand at fossicking! Fossicking basically just means searching through dirt until you find something pretty. Here's how you do it:

First, you get a big bucket of dirt and empty some of it into a sieve

Then you shake it to get rid of the small pieces

You have to shake it a lot

Next, you have to wash it whilst shaking it

You have to wash it a lot. You do an up and down motion so that the "centrifugal force" (or some such nonsense) pushes the heavy pieces (the sapphires) into the centre and should make them easier to find

Then you carefully tip it out onto a table and search through all of it to find your gems

It's a lot of searching. You have to face the sun so that you can see if anything is shiny

Once you've repeated the process until you've been through the whole bucket you should come out with a bag full of lovely sapphires!

Then you get Alan from Stranraer to go through them with his sexy specs to verify which ones are genuine sapphires and which ones are lowly quartz

And then you do your "I OWN A BAG OF SAPPHIRES" dance

Emerald

During our trip down from Ayr to Melbourne we happened upon the town of Emerald. We hadn't planned to spend any time there but we found out that the rodeo was going to be on that weekend so we ended up camping for 2 nights! I can't say you'd ever find Emerald in a tourism guide but it is a lovely little town in the middle of nowhere and I would definitely go back again if I was in the area.

Emerald sits right on the Tropic of Capricorn!

There is even a Yellow Brick Road leading to Emerald City!

Here is the bridge that we slept under ;)

And here is the kids playground that we played on

Cows have right of way around here

The rodeo was cool! The horse riders were so skilled, I was really in awe. The bull riding and cow tackling wasn't really to my taste but then these people rely on the cows for their livelihood so I don't think they would do anything to really harm them. The atmosphere was really good and we had a fun time.

So these girls had to steer their horses around 3 of these drums as fast as they could. I couldn't believe the speeds they were going!

This man had just jumped off his horse, at speed, and grabbed this calf by the horns. The timer stops when he manages to flip the cow onto its back

And of course the junk food was great! This is called a Dagwood Dog - a hotdog dipped in batter and fried. The ketchup is to provide some vitamins.

The Birds!

Just as we crossed over the state border to Victoria we camped for the night in this seemingly idyllic spot by the river:

Little did we know, it was about to turn into a scene from my mum's favourite Hitchcock film.

At first we only put the inside layer of the tent up, because the flies are really annoying over here so if they get too bad you can escape to the tent but still have the benefit of the daylight and not getting too hot in there.

A lovely little bird came hopping over. I thought we had made a friend... and then he spied a loose thread on the tent and started pulling on it! Mathias wanted to shoo him away but I knew he was just doing it to build his nest so I told Mathias to leave him to it because "it's for the babies!!"

Tent Stealer, as I have now named that bird species, flew off with his new treasure and we continued sitting happily... until he came back and started pulling all the threads out of the tent! Soon we were going to have no tent left! So I finally gave in and let Mathias scare him away.

Here is Tent Stealer in action. You can't see it too well on the photo but he has a bunch of our tent in his beak:

We put the outer part of the tent on to stop any more tent stealing then set about making dinner (chips and beans! It was so good!) when we got two new friends. A different species of bird this time - it has a really beautiful voice but it is black and has red eyes so they are kind of freaky. They kept trying to sneak over to the stove to grab our food! Anyone that knows me understands that you do not mess with me when I am hungry! I was having none of this! I took over the bird scaring responsibilities whilst Mathias cooked. When we had shooed one of them away he immediately went and sat on the bonnet of the car and did a massive poo on it. I guess it's the birds' version of giving someone the middle finger. We ate in relative peace after that and then went to bed.

Fast forward to the next morning: we ate peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast and then started packing up the tent, leaving the car boot open so that we could put everything away. When we were distracted the birds hopped into the car and went straight for our food box - they must have been watching us have breakfast because they knew exactly where to find our loaf of bread! Mathias went to chase them out (after I'd taken a photo, of course. Priorities!) but one of them panicked and ended up going further into the car and kept smashing himself against the windows to try to get out! We opened a door and he finally escaped but, as I discovered a few days later, not before crapping all over the car.

Billabong Sanctuary

We had to head back to Townsville for a few days to get the car fixed. As we were bored of hanging around the petrol station car park that had become our home, we decided to spend a day at the Billabong Sanctuary that was just down the road.

BEST DECISION EVER!!!!

This one had a baby in it's pouch. Very odd watching it squirm around in there.

Meet Ray Charles! He's a blindo and he's lovely!

Once I got this kangaroo to stop eating a paper bag he munched on the seeds in my hand :)

Wombat! I want one.

Trying to stay cool.

*ovaries exploding*

My best fake smile!

You say "big wings, Billy!" and he does this!

Emu!

These are freshwater crocs. Apparently they won't eat you. I'm still not putting my foot in there.

Dingoes Ate My Baby (10 points to whoever correctly guesses that pop culture reference)

And finally, my arch nemesis, the saltwater crocodile

No. Just, no.

So, that was a few days ago and we've since driven about 600km south. We're in a little town called Emerald just now where we went "fossicking" for sapphires yesterday. We came out with a small bag of them! One of them was of "gem quality", meaning it was large enough and pure enough to be cut into a nice stone for jewellery. The shop assistants started trying to coerce Mathias into getting it put into a ring for me and we quickly left.

Tonight we are heading to a rodeo! Not sure what that entails exactly but apparently 95% of the town's population will be there, so it should be fun. YeeHa!!!

Charters Towers (and around about)

We spent a few days in the little outback town of Charters Towers recently. It is a pretty neat town - it sprang up in the middle of nowhere when gold was found there on December 24th, 1871, and unlike a lot of gold boom towns, has continued to thrive. The gold is pretty much all gone but there is still a pretty good tourist trade and farming work nearby.

At one time there were 92 hotels in the city - now there are less than 10! Here is the first ever hotel in Charters, built in 1888.

Charters used to be the 2nd biggest city in Queensland! This probably only seems significant if you visit there and see how small it is. The journey from Townsville took us about 2 hours; during the gold boom it would take 2 and a half days by coach.

A wall mural of the gold mines. They are really proud of their history in Charters!

There are loads of old mine shafts around the town

 We had a go at panning for gold ourselves! It was fun, but it hurts your arms a bit. Mathias got some really big chunks out of his "lucky dip" (a cup of dirt that they give you, it is down to luck whether you get any gold out of it or not) as you can see from his blog. I, however, just got a tiny few flakes and let's just say I was less than pleased about this :P

Mathias' new beard idol

The big thing to do in Charters is to go to Tower Hill and watch the sun set, so that's what we did:

I'm so arty

Finally, here are a couple of pictures of our on the road life:

Actually reading the instructions before putting up the tent! That is a special guy right there.

A man's home is his castle

Dinner time! With a side of flies.

A lovely relaxing shower..............