Sunflowers!

After the morning of Australia Day celebrations, the four of us drove out to one of Michelle's co-worker's farm for lunch and a tour of the family's sunflower fields. Kerri-Anne and Allan have two young children, Sean and Tash, and the four of them and the four of us all got into their old Jeep and drove around the farm to get a closer look at the sunflower, cotton and mung bean fields. We had a great time playing in the sunflower fields and saw three emu and a kangaroo. Emerald hosts the only Sunflower Festival in Australia each year (I think around Easter time) and has a huge (3 storey high) replica painting of Van Goh's Sunflowers. Also, Emerald's twin sister city is Altona, Manitoba, CANADA and they also host a similar Sunflower festival. As far as I understand, they award someone each year from Emerald as Sunflower Queen and send that person over to Canada for the festival in Altona. Maybe I'll win this year and get a free flight back home...ha ha ha.

You can just see the house (barely) in this picture at the other side of the field...the little white square.

Australia Day!

Yesterday, January 26, was Australia Day (you know like July 1st ~ Canada Day). So we got up bright and early and headed down to the Emerald Botanical Gardens for a local celebration. As soon as we got there we enjoyed a 'free' Aussie breakfast of bread, bacon, snag (sausage) and baked beans. Then we watched the ceremonies take place ~ citizenship ceremony, singing of the national anthem, awards given out to Emerald citizens and of course a birthday lamington cake.

Michelle spent a lot of time helping out with the face painting (as the Council was putting on the event). And so I got a chance to help out as well, so that was fun! We all stayed around to see the famous 'lolly drop'. They have a helicopter fly over the gardens and drop bags of candy...I thought that was pretty exciting! Here is a picture of the helicopter and you can just see the little bags falling.

Deeper into the Gem Fields

After fossicking for some sapphires, we sat down at the cafe and had a delicious lunch while discussing the area with a local gem enthusiast. He told us that it would be worth while to drive out to the little town of Rubyvale and Sapphire to get a real taste of the gem fields. ...and so we did! Along the way we came across some interesting sights.

We drove through an area where a whole ton of camps were set up.. mostly little shacks and trailers. There were all these crazy contraptions everywhere that looked like they had been around for 50 years or so. They were probably used to help seperate the dirt and find the gems. We didn't see any in use at the time.

When you enter the camp area there is a sign that makes it very clear that you do not want to mess with these peoples' gems!

Gem fields in the Central Highlands

On Jan. 2, we all took a trip out to the gem fields about 40 minutes from Emerald ~ "famous for having the largest apphire fields in the world." We went to "Pat's Gems" and had the experience of fossicking for our own sapphires.

Here are the steps involved in fossicking for sapphires:

Step 1 ~ Fill your bucket with some dirt/wash.

Step 2 ~ Pour into a pan and shake all the little pieces of sand and dirt out.

Step 3 ~Take your pan to the water and shake and turn to get the dirt off the rocks.

Step 4 ~ Dump the pile of dirt left in your pan onto the table and look very closely for anything that sparkles.

Brendon and I found a whole bunch of potential gems....but the majority of them turned out to be pretty rocks. We found 2 very small sapphires. Michelle and Charles found a few small ones as well and had one cut to be put on a necklace.