Sapphire/Rubyvale
With both Tori and Ella both becoming more and more interested in learning about and collecting precious rocks and gems, we decided to head into the quirky little mining towns of Sapphire and Rubyvale.
After setting up in the free 48hr campgrounds we soon headed out to check out these unique, little mining towns.
We quickly noticed that the majority of these little towns were made up of 30x30m plots of land. With run down caravans parked in the middle of them housing the owners.
All the sites have open mine holes which the owners spend long days digging mines averaging 15m deep in the hope of striking it lucky in their hunt for Sapphires.
Heading to the "Miners Sapphire and Walk in Mine Centre" we decided to take a tour of a Sapphire mine. We found it quite interesting and informative hearing about the way Sapphires are mined and the history of Sapphire Mining.
After finding a few geocaches and dodging a few wild Camels we decided to try out luck at panning for our very own Sapphires.
For $10 we brought a bucket of "wash." For those of you who don't know what this is, its basically a bucket of sand dug up from the mine beds with small pieces of sapphires that the mining machines find to small to be of any real value. Still real Sapphires.. Just small and not worth anything too much. For us this experience was perfect, and we had a fun time sorting the gems from the pebbles!
After a good 1.5hrs we managed to find plenty of small Sapphires and the girls were thrilled!
The next day, much to the girls delight, we had a large flock of colourful, friendly birds fly into our camp. We spent the morning feeding them and laughing as they continually landed on everyone, and walked all over the girls as they attempted to complete their schoolwork!
Packing up camp, we drove to the town of Emerald. Stopping to have lunch at the Botanical Gardens and grab a geocache along the way.
With not much between Emerald and Charter Towers, we decided to not spend to much time on this stretch of road. So the next two days were spent making our way to Charter Towers.
Charter Towers
Arriving in Charter Towers, Gary, the girls and I decided to head to the Drive-in that night to watch Pitch Perfect 2 and Ted 2.
After not being to a drive-in for a few years, I think we were all just a little bit excited!
The next day we spent the day looking around the town, whilst admiring the old buildings and driving to the town lookout to get a birds eye view of this historic Gold mining town.
That afternoon we decided to drive to Townsville. Arriving late in the afternoon we decided to stay in the closest free camp to the town... Which oddly enough ended up being literally a small bitchumen carpark at the side of a Bunnings store!!! As strange as it was, it was actually perfect for our needs and we ended up staying there with at least 30 other cars, vans, motorhomes and caravans!!
Early the next day we headed off to Balgal Beach...
Xx
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