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