Emerald, and surrounds 20th to 28th of August

The drive down to Emerald from Charters Towers was nearly 400 kms of nothing.

The most exciting thing to see was some young cattlemen driving their cattle along the highway edges.

The road was lumpy and bumpy for a lot of the 320 kms to Clermont and then it was another 22 kms after the turn off to Theresa Dam, our first stop.

Theresa dam

A relaxing spot by a large and popular dam, we spent the time relaxing and taking walks around the lake.

Clermont

we had stopped here briefly on the way north, our exit point to the coast. A small town which had a nice painted mural on some trains in town and a piano in a tree symbol of the height of a flood. Theresa Creek Dam is the source of Clermont’s water supply.

Then off to Emerald to meet Dave and Andrea again.

Activities in Emerald

1/ We celebrated Johns 60th birthday at the Irish pub and played pool with Andrea and Dave. A fun afternoon. We used the scooters to get into town and out again and finished the day with a birthday cake in their van. John really enjoyed his birthday especially the 12 minute video that included recorded messages from all his family and best mate Chris Smith and also a special video message from Johnathan Frakes a major star of the star trek the next generation series, which blew him away. He played Commander Will Ryker along side Captain Picard. Thank you Amy and Amanda for all your work on this special present. John greatly appreciated it.

2/ We caught up on the usual shopping and washing etc

3/ listened to Errol Gray a singer at happy hour in the caravan park each afternoon, John brought his CD’ S with comical songs about travelling in a caravan.

4/ Scootering around the botanical gardens and town with Andrea and Dave, including playing on the children’s playground equipment, see video below.

What a day of fun with the boys doing crazy stuff in the park and running the scooters batteries flat just before reaching the van park. The markers on the post below show flood levels in previous years, the river not even visible here.

Sapphire, Rubyvale and Anakie, a day trip 57 kms west of Emerald

These are the towns of the Gemfields and contain the largest sapphire fields in the Southern Hemisphere, sapphires were first found in the area in 1875.

We visited Anakie first which had but a few homes, a railway station which had seen better days and an old bottle tree carved by WW1 soldiers waiting to go to war.

The symbol in the picture below for the Gemfields was pretty and was on the crossroads of the Gemfields.

In Sapphire we toured the big Bessie fossicking area and Retreat creek and other areas around town

Then onto Rubyvale to the Miners heritage walk- in mine tour where we learnt about mining for sapphires, walked the tunnels of the mine and saw a small colony of micro bats, the black blob in the photo below.

See video below

After lunch at the Rubyvale pub we returned Emerald.

Notes.

Sapphires in this area were made in the molten lava of volcanos 50 million years ago and now mined in ancient river beds systems deep under ground. The depth they are found at depends on the clay, sandstone and granite layers. The miners looked for the sediment layers to find the Sapphires. The colour is determined by the minerals in the ground and come in any colour of the rainbow. For example the green sapphire is when titanium oxide is present, the rarest the orange sapphire making it the most expensive to buy.

A short blog this time, and now we are travelling south to Springsure and Carnarvon Gorge.