Treasure Hunt

I have always been attracted to shiny things, like a magpie. I used to trawl the thrift stores for cast-off gems and even had my own fashion jewellery line for awhile (though it didn’t last long – the materials cost more than the sales prices. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the business nous!)

Still, it was my luck to one day use my passion to get to report for an international jewellery fair in Vicenza, Italy – two years in a row. (And they say lightning doesn’t strike twice.)

After a few years of reporting on the jewellery trade, I started to think about where all these gorgeous gemstones actually came from, before parachuting prettily on the shop shelves.

So, when my husband and I decided to go on an Outback road trip recently, I made sure we booked in for a gem fossicking tour somewhere along the route. This ended up being at the Northern Territory bush hideaway of Gemtree, 140km northeast of Alice Springs. The aim? Fun, fitness – and bling!

At Gemtree, you can drop in for a guided, tag-along, fossicking tour at the nearby gem fields for a day (April to September) – or stay awhile. We chose to stick around overnight for a garnet fossicking tour the next morning (my birthstone!)

On the morning, our tour guide, Trevor, asked us where we were from, bemusedly taking in our ultra clean clothes and shiny vehicle. We told him Sydney. “Ah, Steak and Kidney,” he said, nodding knowingly. He handed us our tools, including a container of water, a bucket, four sieves, a shovel and a pick – no doubt mentally placing bets on how long we would last.   Then, we stood about in the red dirt, lathered in sunscreen and insect repellant, listening to Trevor’s instructions. “Fossicking is something you don’t need a uni degree to do,” he explained. “The downside to this business though is you’ve got to dig! Garnets are not in a band at a certain depth or direction. They could be anywhere between the surface and bedrock. It’s a bit like fishing – trial and error.”

Trevor took us through the stages of fossicking – using the pick to break the ground, digging mounds of dirt into a bucket, transporting the dirt back to your “work station”, sieving the material, dunking it in water to wash it, and finally, holding it up to the sun to see if anything shiny and red winked back.
So, how long did us city slickers last? Well, not until 2pm, which was the time we were allowed to stay until. But we did stick it out for about an hour-and-a-half in the searing 35C heat. (Hey, it was our first time!) Still, it wasn’t too bad a day at the office – we ended up with about 15 stones (garnets are worth about $100 a carat).

Sweating buckets, we headed back to have the stones assessed at the gem room and gallery. We discovered about six of the stones were of gem quality, ranging up to 5.5mm in size. We chose to have a 5mm stone crafted into a neck pendant for yours truly, which would be assembled by resident cutter Kerry Ruff.

Intrigued? Or, rather not get your fingernails dirty? You can also soak up Australia’s sparkling history via a tour of the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia or learn about the pearling industry in WA’s Broome. This is what we plan to do next time around…!

Carla Caruso is a freelance journalist and jewellery junkie. She has reported on the Vicenza gold fairs in Italy and is penning a novel about all that glitters. Visit her jewellery blog, www.diamondsandwhirls.com.