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In terms of depositing of material, this is generally the case, however if there's large scale mining going on in the area obviously this is going to change. I'm not knowledgeable on the area. Rocks and minerals that have stayed within a river system for a long period of time get worn into...

First picture is quartz with most of the crystal structure intact so you can assume these have not travelled far within the river otherwise they would be a lot more rounded. Photo 3 is a conglomerate. Spot on. Photo 4. Congratulations, you've found sapphire. In terms of the deposits in the...

Found as a result of digging through geological papers from the late 80s and early 90s. Gave me coordinates for a lava plug within the granite near Oberon. Seems fairly untouched as it's in rugged country. Contains what seems to be peridot, olivine, clinopyroxene and spinel. Based on what seems...

It's not going to be the best quality photo because it's a bloody tiny stone, but here's a sapphire partially coated with gold. 71 specks of gold and 2 Sapphires from 3 pans on a private property on the Turon.

Seems like it would be something like Baryte. There's a handle of things that fit 4.4sg/2-4Mohs but most of them fluoresce.

That is a cracker of a stone.

Do you have a VJ Lefty? I went to an orchard today and noticed they had heaps of quartz, limestone fossils and epidote on a bunch of pallets. Got talking to the owners and turns out they're super keen on all things fossicking and one of the owners has a VJ machine. So I also have some new...

Does anyone have any recent information on the VJ machine? Are they still selling after Mal retired? Their website is fairly limited and hasn't been changed in 6 months. Also if anyone has used one and has opinions on it I would love to hear.

Here is a short video of a Mt Surprise topaz cut by someone I spoke to last week: Here is a screenshot from the video, it doesn't do the stone any justice. https://imgur.com/5EAVsor

Such a pity they lose a lot of their colour when they are out of the water. Beautiful fish.

Is that quartz coated with titanium or does it show that colour the whole way through the crystal?

No not diamonds unfortunately. Diamonds aren't magnetic as they are Carbon based. There's a handful of minerals that form octahedral crystal structure, diamond certainly is one. If you could cut a section of it, it might allow a better identification.

I believe it might be chromite only if those octahedral crystal structures on the middle right of this photo (big rock) have a metallic lustre to them and are just covered in mud. Otherwise its very hard to tell off photos, doesn't appear to be any of the usual suspects. It would also explain if...

It's great you're looking for alternatives to keep in touch with other fossickers, however the age demographic is usually a lot older than other hobbies. And as such, different forms of social media are rarely used and I wouldn't expect most people to use Kik. But there are plenty of members...

I do a lot of bird photography when I'm out and about. I spooked an Eastern Great Egret who was fishing in the Macquarie River and he flew off into the westerly sunset as I snapped this.

As of today, the water is barely flowing. It seems to be moving under the ground in areas. A lot of the pools of water are going or have already become stagnant. The depth of some holes people are digging is just bulls*!t. Some would be getting to 3m deep and there's one cavity that you would be...

I'll be there today on my way through. I'll let you know what it's like.

I use a yabby pump and have a number of reducing PVC sockets glued to the end. Comes down to about 1/2inch at the bottom. If this is that path you want to go, first thing is rip the rubber seating out which gives you the suction power. Place the bit of rubber over an old thong and cut that out...

All three are quartz. The first one is blue-ish due to inclusions within the quartz.

I've driven past heading north on my way home and met 3 young guys from Canberra. They'd be up the creek (towards the south side) until they reached a waterfall of some sort and we're digging and sieving the gravel in the river. Showed me probably 30 Sapphires and a handful of Zircons, all...