G'day Lefty.
Re: Snow.
We met Snow (Crispin) in 1988 when we went up to the Rubyvale/Sapphire gem fields for a look see. Had plenty of Vic./NSW fossicking bush camp experience but were real new chums on your dry fields.
Set up a rough camp at Washpool, very few people about and what there were seemed to prefer the Rubyvale van park to bush camping.
We noticed an old Toyota wagon going back and forth each day and one afternoon I was getting water out of the creek just above the crossing and met the old bloke with the wagon. Shock of white hair, craggy features, busted up walking gear needing 2 alloy crutches to get along. Fairly terse sort of G'day, didn't want to make much conversation other than that "they don't trust NSW rego's around here much"
About a week later we had not found a colour so thought I would go for a walk and see if I could maybe get a bit of info from this bloke.
I think the fact we had been camped there and persevering must have softened his attitude, I found him sitting down on the ground picking into what looked like a narrow trench. He got up and was happy to have a yarn, told me he had been very busted up hip and legs but the repair job was worse than useless and he was on crutches for the rest of his life.
I could see that we were on the wrong track with gear, he had an inclined sieve which he threw the wash onto, separating it into a concentrate which he sieved in his Willoughby. A real production line, my thought were going into gear real fast.
Early next morning his truck turned into our track and with some difficulty Snow clambered out. Next thing he was hauling gear off the roof rack.....inclined sieve, Willoughby and water drum....all the gear to turn us into Sapphire miners. Just drop it back when you are leaving, what could a bloke say.
But the best was yet to come.
Over a cuppa and fruit cake he told us how, over the years the fossicking areas had been "marauded", the whole areas scraped with bucket loaders with the wash carted away, processed through a wet plant and the tailings brought back, dumped and spread.
It was this dumped material that we were so carefully sieving for nothing!
The secret, he confided, was the fact that the scrapers took the surface wash but missed the hundreds of small drainage gutters that ran throughout the fields. This is what he worked, prospecting out a gutter no more that 2ft. wide, scraping it out to bedrock and pulling some beautiful stone.
On that first trip we spent 3 months under Snows tuition, but we were dead set lucky. He was a cranky old bugger and any one who tormented or got him offside then lookout.
We returned to Washpool and Graves Hill with great success every winter until 1996 when, on Snows advice, we partnered up in an opal mining show near Eromanga. But we kept in touch, every Christmas a long letter, mainly how things were going downhill, the big miners like Great Northern buggering it for everyone etc. etc.
On a trip back, we last saw Snow in 2003, I think he was suffering from Diabetes and 2007(?) received a letter from his sister to say he had been in Brisbane where both legs were amputated and he had subsequently passed away.
His ashes were spread on the gem fields, a place he truly loved.
Mike
Though they do have mobile coverage in certain spots now.
