Belshaw's obsession with New England sapphires

Photo: Australian sapphires

I have recently been on a bit of a sapphire trip.

Growing up in a gold and precious stones mining area, stories of prospecting and discovery were all around me.

Then I had a girlfriend who told me all about the gully on her place where raw sapphires could be found.

A little later I started buying sapphires in Armidale, getting Evan J Lewis (a local jeweller) to make them into rings. The cost wasn't too high, and they made a nice local present.

Then life changed and I forgot about all this. Now it's back!

So I have just put up a number of posts:

• Fossicking in New England
• New England Sapphires - a note
• Mining in New England - working bibliography
• Sapphires in New England - historical notes

Never let it be said that I am not an obsessive!

Fossicking in New England

Photo: Fossicking, Inverell

Some time ago, I started a series of posts describing the Fossicker's Way, the New England road linking some of New England's best fossicking areas.

Google blogger is down just at present, so I cannot provide details of these posts. I will add links once the problem is sorted.

I did just the first two days in this series, leaving my travellers stranded at Nundle. Now the people from Big Sky Country have put together some useful material on fossicking in New England's Northern Tablelands' region that allows me to extend the series.

Moving from Nundle, visitors travel to Tamworth and then up the western edge of the Tablelands through to Inverell and Glen Innes. Here we come to some great fossicking country. Here the sapphires are plentiful but, they can also be really, really big.

A couple sifting through a pile of wash at Inverell’s 7 Oaks Fossicking Park, can attest to this fact, after discovering a 42.13 carat blue sapphire, the largest stone ever found by a fossicker on site.

According to 7 Oaks’ owner, Peter Black, the stone is “an absolute monster”.

While the size of this find was rare, unearthing gemstones in decent quantities from the region is not, say the resident fossicking experts of Big Sky Country.

Along with the royal blue sapphire, the region is prolific for its rich diversity of gems and minerals, such as aquamarine, emerald, fluorite, topaz, zircon, garnet and quartz.

Big Sky Country is the New England North West region of NSW, part of it intersected by the road known as – yes, The Fossicker’s Way. The best towns to stay in for a few good days of fossicking are Inverell and Glen Innes.

Inverell justifiably goes by the title of ‘The Sapphire City’ because 70 per cent of Australia’s sapphires come from here, while Glen Innes boasts Minerama, one of the biggest annual gem and mineral festivals in Australia.

Here’s a basic guide to some of the fossicking options provided by Big Sky Country.

7 Oaks Fossicking Park, Inverell

This 300 acre property on Frazer Creek is family operated and has been producing sapphires since the 1960's. You can fossick on the natural creek banks, but the easier and most popular option is to sift through the piles of wash supplied to you.

Peter Black had only just bought 7 Oaks in April 2015, when a few weeks later, a couple from Port Macquarie found a 42.13 carat sapphire – the biggest find ever by a fossicking visitor at the park. The stone is estimated to be worth $5,000 to a collector.

Situated 19kms from Inverell, 7 Oaks is open for basic bush camping, with bush toilets, picnic tables and wood fire barbecues. Cost is $20 per day for adults and $10 for children aged 8 to 14.

http://www.sapphiresinverell.com.au/

Phone 02 6725 1582

Billabong Blue Sapphire Fossicking Park, Inverell

This park, 16km from Inverell, makes fossicking relatively civilized. You get to sift through the wash on benches at waist height and the owners, Rhonda and Bill, offer their professional advice should you need it. There’s a café, BBQ and picnic areas, water tanks and toilets.

Billabong Blue promotes itself as ideal for the first time fossicker or the seasoned expert, and guarantees every visitor will go home with some coloured gems in their pocket. Cost is $20 per day, or $40 for a family (two adults, two children).

http://www.billabongblue.fossickingpark.com.au/

Phone 02 6721 0500

Poolbrook Gems Fossicking Park, Inverell

Poolbrook is another private property where visitors can fossick for a day for a fee. Located at Frazer's Creek, 26 kilometres from Inverell, visitors must stop at Kottage Kiya Gallery, 8 km from Inverell on the Nullamanna-Emmaville Road, to pick up sieves and get directions from Louise Walburn, one of the park's owners. Louise also gives first-time fossickers some helpful hints. Cost is $10 per day, children under 12 free.

Phone 02 6722 2781

Free Fossicking Sites in Inverell

There are three free areas to fossick around Inverell: Pindaroi Lake, Bukkulla; Frazer Creek, Nullamanna and Swanbrook Creek, Swanbrook Road.

Stannifer Fossicking Area, Tingha

Many of Tingha’s streets are named after the gems found in the district. In this free fossicking area, you may find jellybeans (water worn quartz crystals) quartz and grass stone. Tingha is about 17km south of Inverell.

Glen Rest Tourist Park, Glen Innes

Resident caravanners and visitors to Glen Innes can enjoy the privilege of fossicking through a bucket or bag of soil, with equipment and tuition supplied, along with shaded picnic tables. Cost is from $10 per bucket.

www.gleninnes.com/glenrestpark

Phone 02 6732 2413

Wellingrove Fossicking Reserve, Glen Innes

A peaceful and secluded spot for a fossick, Wellingrove is 19km north west of Glen Innes where you can hope to find sapphires and zircons.

A permit is required from the Visitor Information Centre and it costs from $5 per person a day but children under 12 are free.

Boolabinda Holiday Homestead, Glen Innes

Fossicking is just one of the activities available at this farmstay. You can search for sapphires and zircons in Reddestone Creek for $8 per day, plus $3 equipment hire.

http://www.boolabinda.com.au/ (closed June July & August)

Phone 02 6732 2215

Bullock Mountain Homestead

Bullock Mountain is also a farmstay, where you can fossick through buckets of wash from a disused mine or try your luck in Reddestone Creek. Fossicking park buckets costs $15.00 (includes sieves) while creek fossicking is $10.

http://www.bullockmountainhomestead.com/

Phone 02 6732 1599 – please book ahead.

Three Waters High Country Holidays, Glenn Innes

Fossicking for sapphires, zircons in Reddestone Creek at $8 per day, with equipment hire $3.

www.gleninnes.com/3waters

Phone 02 67 32 4863

Guided Field Tours – Baptist Church Fossicking Club, Glen Innes

This is a group visit to private land sites that occurs most Wednesdays. The group leaves at 9am from the Baptist Church, New England Highway and travels in convoy. A small charge per person.

Other areas to remember for free fossicking around Glen Innes Severn Council shire include Kookabookra, Glencoe, and Torrington State Conservation Area.

Three Creeks Gold Mine, Bingara

Three Creeks Gold Mine is a working mine that re-opened to the public in 2015 after a six-year closure. Owner Paul Myer guarantees that every visitor who pans will find some gold here, from a reef that has been mined since the 1800s. He provides full instruction on gold panning and equipment. Quartz crystals are also dominant here. Gold panning is $25 per day (this includes a mine tour), $15 for kids under 12 and under 5’s free.

There are a limited number of campsites available here as well as an on-site van.

Phone 02 6783 2224.

Iron Bark Creek and Woodsreef Fossicking Areas, Barraba

The Barraba area was known for its gold mines and mining villages in the late 1800s, and these areas are still most worthwhile for a fossick. You may find gold and other minerals such as copper, pyrites, jasper, garnets, zeolite, as well as opaque red, brown and yellow quartz. There are no facilities at Woodsreef Reserve but it is open for camping.

Phone 02 6782 1255

Further Information phone:

• Inverell Tourism: 02 6728 8161
• Glen Innes Tourism: 02 6730 2400
• Bingara Visitor Centre: 02 6724 0066

Both Inverell and Glen Innes Visitors Centres have their own fossicking brochures, which provide detailed information and maps.

Entry point for the Fossickers Way series.

New England Sapphires - a note

Photo: Sapphires in the rough from Australian Sapphire.

Did you know that New England is the biggest producer of sapphires in the world? The estimates I have seen vary from 50 to 80 per per cent of world production.

I was digging around trying to find out some background information on New England sapphires. Then I had to stop. When I came back and tried to find the site I had been looking at on Google, I could no longer find it through search. Frustration!

To avoid this happening again, I decided to record some of the web sites relevant to sapphires in New England. I will update this from time to time.

I have also established two pages on New England's History, one to record historical material on sapphires, the second to create a working bibliography on the history of New England mining.

Turning now to web references.

Australian Sapphire is an industry wide site containing a range of useful material on Australian sapphires.

Aussie Sapphire is a family run enterprise involving Andrew and Leah Lane and their two young sons who have been mining sapphires on their property on the Reddestone Creek in New England for over 25 years. You can buy direct from them.

An abstract of Sapphires – Processing, Grading, Characteristics, Heat Treatment and Marketing of Sapphires by A.D. McIntyre and C.C. Sorrell from International Ceramic Monographs, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 826-34 contains some interesting industry discussion.

Gem fossicking provides some general information. The Gemmological Association of Australia site provides a useful overview of the New England and Central Queensland fields.

The 7 Oaks Fossicking Property is located 20kms from Inverell and has been producing sapphires since the 1960s.

The Inverell 0n-line site provides a range of general material on Inverell and includes some links through to sapphire attractions. The Glen Innes Tourism site also provides useful information, including links through to some of the fossicking/sapphire attractions.

Wing Hing Long & Co - Tingha

This photography of Wing Hing Long & Co letterhead, 1927 was taken by Stephen Thompson and forms part of the NSW Heritage Branch on-line exhibition on the store.

The exhibition provides a window into one thread in New England's story, the hisroty of New England's Chinese community.

New England Australia's Chinese - Reference Post provides an entry point to various posts linked in some way to New England's Chinese.

Emmaville Mining Musuem

Photo: Foley's General Store, Emmaville

I have so far carried two stories on this blog referring to Emmaville or Vegetable Creek. The first post introduced the story of the Chinese in New England, the second story dealt with mining, arsenic and the New England pastoral industry.

In both stories I forgot to mention that Emmaville has a mining museum located in the old Foley's general store. This has a major collection of minerals and photographs providing an interesting picture of Emmaville's past.

Arsenic, Mining and the New England Pastoral Industry

Photo: Gordon Smith, Ottery Mine Remains.

Gordon Smith recently toured the mining areas on the westen side of New England's Northern Tablelands. You will find his photos here, here, here, here and here.

Gordon notes that tin and arsenic were mined at the Ottery Mine, not far from Emmaville, from the 1880’s. Here we see the remains of the brick condensation chambers where arsenic solids formed on the surface of brick walls (see pink substance at the lower right hand side of the photograph). Workers then scraped the arsenic from the bricks.

Arsenic was used quite extensively in gold mining to help extract the ore.

At Hillgrove east of Armidale, the soil around the old mine processing plants is still heavily impregnated with arsenic, as are the waters of Baker's Creek at the bottom of the adjoining Hillgrove Gorge. Traces of arsenic can be found in sediments along the Macleay River all the way to the river mouth.

Arsenic was also extensively used as a sheep dip.

My grandfather who came to Armidale as a farm labourer in 1907 described the practice this way.

"The next three years were spent partly on farms around Armidale but mainly on a sheep station south west of Uralla. It was my first experience with sheep and the primative means of combating worms in sheep. The one and only practice was to muster a mob of sheep in the late afternoon and starve them in the yards till early next morning. On the previous evening, up to 30 poor and wormy sheep were separated and given a drench. This consisted of arsenic boiled in water, the sediment being drawn off and the selected sheep were drenched. If not more than half were dead in the morning the drench was at the right strength. It was a crude and drastic treatment, but some years elapsed before an effective drench could be found for the greatest scourge of all Fluke (liver worm) and the Lung worm."

New England is dotted with small sites with arsenic impregnated soil where this practice was carried out.