- Joined
- May 1, 2014
- Messages
- 1,958
- Reaction score
- 2,530
Thought I'd throw in a Queensland contribution to the forum. For those who don't know, Reward DFL is a section of the Anakie gemfield in central Queensland. The field is quite large, covering around 900 square km, divided into a number of sections - Reward, Divide, Graves hill and a number of smaller areas in the vicinity of the townships of Sapphire and Rubyvale, plus two areas further to the south - Glenalva and The Willows - and Tommahawk creek about 35km to the north. The mineralized area likely covers a much greater area but is under private grazing leases.
The field has been in operation for over 100 years, having been discovered when a team of surveyors surveying for a railway line to go from Rockhampton to the grazing lands in the west discovered some red stones in a creek bed and took them to be rubies. They were in fact zircons, the sapphires were not discovered straight away. At one stage during the 70's, almost three-quarters of the worlds gem quality sapphire was reputed to be coming from this one field.
When I was knee-high, the family had two claims at Russian gully, just behind Rubyvale. That's where I developed my love of fossicking and of wondering "what's in the ground?". Those claims and the old tin shack we stayed in are long gone, but at the age of 40 I have recently pegged my own claims at the far end of Reward, about 7km out in the bush from Rubyvale.
It's a bit different to Russian gully where the wash was about 8 feet down under a loose black soil. Here, there is a thin band of wash between 6 and 12 inches below the surface, then a floor of red clay a foot or so thick and then another, thicker wash. We've really only just started and have moved SFA dirt so far. The shallow section shows the depth of the top wash....
Initial results haven't been greatly encouraging so far - but that's prospecting. The stones are there, there's just a lot of dirt in between them! These are the only things to come out so far of any significant size. This pale mauve zircon is around 25 carats but is too shattered to be a cutter unfortunately. The green sapphire is around 5 carats and will likely cut a small stone.
The above stones were captured by 6mm apeture mesh. Running some dirt through the 3mm mesh produced about 2 dozen little sapphires, zircons and black spinels.
So the patch of ground is definately mineralized. But they ain't that easy to find - I guess they wouldn't be worth anything if they were.
I hope to update this about 6 times a year during the cooler half of the year - after about September and before about April, it's just too hot and the chances of being floodbound are too high.
Next trip out is in about 3 weeks time - crossing fingers for a bit better luck
The field has been in operation for over 100 years, having been discovered when a team of surveyors surveying for a railway line to go from Rockhampton to the grazing lands in the west discovered some red stones in a creek bed and took them to be rubies. They were in fact zircons, the sapphires were not discovered straight away. At one stage during the 70's, almost three-quarters of the worlds gem quality sapphire was reputed to be coming from this one field.
When I was knee-high, the family had two claims at Russian gully, just behind Rubyvale. That's where I developed my love of fossicking and of wondering "what's in the ground?". Those claims and the old tin shack we stayed in are long gone, but at the age of 40 I have recently pegged my own claims at the far end of Reward, about 7km out in the bush from Rubyvale.
It's a bit different to Russian gully where the wash was about 8 feet down under a loose black soil. Here, there is a thin band of wash between 6 and 12 inches below the surface, then a floor of red clay a foot or so thick and then another, thicker wash. We've really only just started and have moved SFA dirt so far. The shallow section shows the depth of the top wash....
Initial results haven't been greatly encouraging so far - but that's prospecting. The stones are there, there's just a lot of dirt in between them! These are the only things to come out so far of any significant size. This pale mauve zircon is around 25 carats but is too shattered to be a cutter unfortunately. The green sapphire is around 5 carats and will likely cut a small stone.
The above stones were captured by 6mm apeture mesh. Running some dirt through the 3mm mesh produced about 2 dozen little sapphires, zircons and black spinels.
So the patch of ground is definately mineralized. But they ain't that easy to find - I guess they wouldn't be worth anything if they were.
I hope to update this about 6 times a year during the cooler half of the year - after about September and before about April, it's just too hot and the chances of being floodbound are too high.
Next trip out is in about 3 weeks time - crossing fingers for a bit better luck