G'day Renatab, I like your enthusiasm.
To be totally realistic here, if you come back with a couple of decent size cutters around say 5-6ct you'll be doing very well. My mate just got back from Billabong Blue on Friday, he found about 10 cutters over a week he said, he was digging in the creek. I'll photo them today and put up a pic later. One family found an 84ct stone just up from where he was digging, was supposedly quite a decent one.
Okay, regarding cutting stones, it is a real art form and can take a while even to just cut your first one, most people start with a Topaz or something else not too valuable, as cutting Sapphire can be difficult/problematic even for experienced cutters. Barney on here constantly says that he hates cutting them, but he does do an excellent job on them. They can be a very problematic stone to cut due to inclusions, cracks, different hardness planes, even just deciding whether to cut on or off table can be difficult.
Anyone can learn to facet but it could take a while is all I'm trying to get at.
When I sort my stones it is usually into 2 lots,1) stones over 4ct, 2) stones under 4ct, 3) Stars and stones to be Cabochoned.
Nice stones near 4ct and over I get cut by Barney (Kingsolomon), stones smaller than that I send to Lamberts Gems in Thailand,
http://www.lambertgems.com/ as cutting the small ones here in Aus is generally not worth it unless they are of exceptional colour and clarity. Regarding stone yeild with Sapphire it is generally only around 25% of the rough size if you're lucky and the stone has very few problems.
Any stars and Cabochons I send to Thailand also as they do a great job on them and they are very cheap to do, at $1.65 per ct. Faceting costs only $4.65 per ct for Sapphire over 0.49ct. They do an ok job at faceting, some people say they don't and some say they do, I think it's decent value for what you pay for as the small stones will cost quite a lot to do here and will most likely never be worth what you paid to get them done.
Anyway that sort of about covers it. I don't know about Surry Hills Lapidary Club but someone there might offer to cut your stones for you. Or take the time to learn how to do your own faceting.
A few small stones from Lamberts here in this pic, these are from the last 2 lots I sent there, they are all Inverell Blues.