Fossicking at Glencoe

Max is visiting us from Canberra for the first week of his school holidays and we decided yesterday to head  to Glen Innes to do a spot of fossicking. For the uninitiated, this involves combing creek beds and mullock heaps for gem stones - for example, sapphires. It was a lovely day, with brilliant sunshine, unpolluted air, little humidity and temperatures hovering around 13C. In short, a typical mid-winter day. Our particular destination was a field near Glencoe. Needless to say, this spot was named after its more famous namesake in the Scottish Highlands, but is much higher than the original at an altitude of 1100m. Only 200 people live in the district and the village, if one can call it that, is famous for its pub, the Red Lion.

The fossicking site was at a bend in the local stream, Marowan Creek which is a tributary of Beardy Waters. For those with Google Earth, its geographical coordinates are: 29 55' 59.87" South and 151 43' 28.05" East. We spent quite a while digging up gravel from the stream banks and the flood plain, placing it in sieves, and washing the mud away:

Alas, we found very little - just a few small slivers of what looked like sapphires. Perhaps we were not too skilled. More interestingly we attracted quite a crowd of onlookers. For example, two horses, a mare in foal and a youngster, made their appearance, examined our car, quite tamely came right up to us and looked over our shoulders at what we were doing. We patted their noses. And, on the other side of the creek, a herd of cattle was  fence intently observing our actions. It looks as if we made their day!

AS