Kate's found a big one...

It was quite late in the afternoon by the time we eventually found somewhere to fossick, but luckily we would be able to take the last tour of the day in the underground sapphire mine. First of all though we had half an hour to find lots of sapphires and make our millions…
We chose a bucket of dirt that had been dug up (we think that they may have a quick look for any huge sapphires first, although they say that they don’t!) and the lady in charge taught us how to fossick. She gave us little plastic bags and told us to put anything we thought might be a sapphire into it and at the end she would sort through and tell us if we had found anything worthwhile. It really isn’t as easy as you might think, firstly you have to sieve all the excess dust and dirt from the fossicking pan, then you have to wash it for a minute in a bath of water so that you are left with bits of wet stone and rock and maybe sapphires. After washing in a particular way then all the sapphires should move to the centre which she illustrated very well, but we failed miserably to replicate! It is then a simple (?!) task to pick out the little lumps of sapphire which look more or less identical to the little lumps of coloured worthless stone! The trick is to look for anything that glistens in the sunlight, and before long we did find some green sapphires! At the end I was getting an eye for it and picked out about three shiny stones that turned out to be zircons. We had filled our little bags with all sorts of lumps of stone, desperately willing them to be sapphires! Mum was too embarrassed to show the lady the huge lump she had picked out thinking it may be more than a bit of rock!
It turned out that Kate and I found four sapphires and 3 zircons, however only one of them (which we have to admit, was the one the lady found when she was demonstrating how to do it!) was of a good enough quality to cut. The others were too flawed to do anything with. Mum and dad did well, finding about five, with two of a good quality.
The underground tour was interesting, showing how the miners had followed the small sapphire seam in a maze of tunnels. Some of the earlier tunnels were so small that the men used to crawl in on their stomachs.
Clutching our well-deserved gems, we retuned home (via an alternative route!) after a long, but action-packed day.
We ate out that evening at the only decent restaurant/café in Moranbah, The Purple Grape.