Fossicking

Richard has found his calling. He has the eagle eye for spotting sapphires. Fossicking is a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. We've been to a couple of different fossicking parks, both ones that are run by people and get their pile of rocks from the mines, and the type on the side of the road where you dig up your own pile of rocks from the stream. The former is much more profitable, even though you pay $10-20 for the day.

First, fill a bucket from the pile and either spin the silt off and then wash or go directly to washing.


Next, wash the two sieves. The top sieve is for the big stuff (the stuff which will pay for our trip!) and the bottom is finer, for the little stuff. Di is really good at washing. Shaking it in the right way is important so the sparkly bits end up in the middle and on top when the sieve is flipped.


Finally, pick out the sparkly bits. Richard has the eye for this!


Here's what we've found in a couple of days of fossicking. The blues are sapphires or corundrum. The reds, ambers, and clears are zircon. The large rock is a 1cm per side sapphire. We're going to either get it polished or cut.