Grey skies this morning to greet us and I don't think any sun is going to appear today. One advantage of that is when doing exercise one does not get too hot and sweaty (not that I planned to do any). Alan is on a mission, fossicking for boulder opal and that requires digging big holes. We planned to go to Duck Creek or Sheep Station Creek where we knew fossicking was allowed but we ended up at
Yowah, and what a gem of a place it was too (excuse the pun). After a visit to the museum it was off to the fossicking fields.
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| The fossicking field (well a bit of it) |
Alan set to with shovel and pick in hand while I pottered around looking for the precious boulder opal on the top soil, just hoping some miner had accidentally dropped a really big bit and not noticed. Well, it could happen <g>. I did find some, a tiny wee bit but at least it was something and probably worth the grand fortune of 10 cents. Alan started digging, deeper and deeper he went.
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| Alan starting on his hole digging |
On my potter round I almost stepped on a snake, seeing it's tail just at the last minute. I am pretty glad I was keeping my eyes on the ground. No fear, snake, maybe poisonous may not be but it does not want to attack unless it feels threatened, so stepping backwards I backed off. Mind you I could not resist getting the camera out and getting a picture, this is the first proper snake we have seen, the first was at Jessica's Gap near Alice and was about 6 inches long.
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| You can just see the snake if you look closely |
Alan continued to dig and stuck gold, OK not gold, boulder opal. His find was wonderful, a large piece about 2 inches long and triangle shaped, best of all it was already polished :)
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| Alan trying another bigger hole and making it deeper and deeper!! |
In the meantime, I spied a microwave tower, could there possibly be Internet access, worth a try, and low and behold, there in the middle of the fossicking field I was able to sort the problems I had yesterday when trying to get the blog done and it all went wrong. Laptop charging off the car battery, mobile modem fired up and a cup of coffee on the dashboard of the cruiser, sorted.
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| Laptop connected to car battery and ready to access the net. |
Getting a bit bored of digging rocks out of the ground and still no sun shining we decided to set off again and head back up north towards Emerald. Guess what the fossicking will hopefully yield from there? We drove up the road to
Cunnamulla, odd place, the bank did not even have an ATM, not staying here tonight. Up the road another 100km to
Charleville and to cut a long story short it was a place of lots of accommodation but no vacancies until the very last place we tried and they had one cabin left. Bed tonight is a rather posh cabin in the
Bailey Bar Caravan Park, it is lovely and has just been renovated. Night night all.
So pleased Alan found his Opal - I was feeling exhausted seeing all his hard efforts. Of course the opal would have been polished by the natural movement of the earth in which it was embedded. Good luck with the emeralds. Living this holiday with you is SO brilliant - thanks microwave masts and computers - oh, and car batteries - and of course, thanks to you Jane for all the effort you are putting in to sharing your experiences, thoughts and photos. Love to you both. xxx
ReplyDeleteG'Day Ingrid . Yep Alan is getting pretty good with a spade, when we get back to KSA I think he will be requested to spend time in the garden sorting the jacuzzi (not a chance). Tis spring here at the moment, but from what I can gather there are two rainy seasons and one of them is at this time of year. Yesterday was the first dry 24 hours we have had and beautiful blue skies too. I will get the blog up to date either tomorrow or the next day with our final adventures. We will be heading towards Brisbane today and arriving there tomorrow ready to return the Toyota on the 19th. Have loved all your comments on the blog, the feedback has made it all worthwhile. Sad our holiday is coming to an end, there is still so much to see. Let's hope the boulder opal is lucky for us and the stars shine on our side so we can come back, there are a few places we could quite happily live here in this magical land :)
ReplyDeleteBest be off, one last cuppa to drink then back in the car for another day on the road. Love you lots. Jane xxxx