Rubyvale Qld 26 July 2019

Rubyvale Qld 26 July 2019

More fossicking today, but done the genteel way. Just down the road there is a place called The Miners Cabin, which is someones house, but down in the backyard they have set up a shed and a range of sorting tables, sieves and Willoughbies all set up and ready to go. You give them $20 and pick your bucket of wash, receive two pair of tweezers and are shown your table. The whole process is explained and away you go. It took us an hour and a half to work through our bucket including taking time out to to eat the complimentary coffee/tea and scones. Anything you find you pick up with your tweezers and pop the stone into your dish. When you are finished you take your dish to the checking stations where experts examine each stone, sort them, and give you advice as to what to do with them. The advice ranges from putting them into 'Show and tell' bags, to 'Polish' and best of all 'cutters'. They even give you documents and instructions on how to get them cut, in Thailand of all places, for almost nothing.

We ended up with a bag of 'show and tell' dross, which was a bit disappointing given the list of daily hero finds they had up. Anyway, it was a lot easier and and lot more fun than yesterday's hard slog.

Miners Cottage. Rubyvale Old 

Miners Cottage. Rubyvale Qld 

Judy pouring over the fines. Miners Cottage. Rubyvale Qld

Sorting and assessing. Miners Cottage. Rubyvale Qld

Hero finds of the day. Miners Cottage. Rubyvale Qld

The experience was so good, we went back this morning to run another bucket through before we head off for Clermont. This time we had a bit more luck, scoring some Polish stones and a couple of interesting Cutters, one of which was 12 carats in its uncut state. We'll be sending them off for sure to see saw how they scrub up!