Whilst the
last roadhouse had aliens, the next one (Aileron) had enormous statues of
aboriginal people. And goats. And an ancient kangaroo. Good for a stop to stretch
the legs, and we ran into the family from the night before so all was fun.
We were
heading to Gemtree, a caravan park we had heard about in the Facebook groups. Kate,
the woman who runs it, is just lovely and its one of few parks that don’t charge any extra for children. It was a 70km
detour down the Plenty Hwy in the direction of Qld, but 70km is nothing these
days! There was the promise of a pool, but I had learnt from last time and told
the kids “but remember, this is their winter –
it might not be working yet”. Thank goodness I did that, as yet
again the pool was out of order. It only operates in Summer. It was 34degrees
that day, I’d HATE to be here in Summer!
We did get
to spend a day fossicking for garnets, though. We had to meet Kate’s husband Aaron at 8.15am, which was a little
too early for this lazy family. What made it far worse was that we had to wear
proper shoes! How on earth will we ever survive back in the real world?!
We drove out
to the fossicking grounds and Aaron showed us the technique – use the pick axe
to break up the ground, shovel some earth into the bucket, sieve out the
stones, wash the stones in a separate sieve, and hold it up to the light to see
if any of the stones are red and sparkly.
We had luck
with our first go, and then the three or four after that. Aaron left us to it
after a bit, and we kept going ourselves. The kids were entertained for the
first little while, but their enthusiasm wore off when we hit a dry patch and stopped
finding anything. Angus seemed happy to just wander around holding the pick and
pretending he was in minecraft, but poor Lexie still wasn’t feeling 100% so crashed on the picnic rug for
a bit.
Just as we
were going to call it a day, I decided to try digging in a completely new
patch, and we hit pay dirt again. This revived everyone’s spirits and we toiled away for a bit longer, finding lots of little
red gems.
Kate assessed our stones when we returned, and we ended up with 7
usable gems and a good handful of smaller stones. They have a gem cutter onsite
and all sorts of settings to choose from, but I quickly realized that I
probably wouldn’t wear any of the jewelry, with the
exception of a little pair of sparkly earrings. But at $219 to have them cut
and set (and mailed out) it seemed a little excessive a purchase for this
non-jewellery wearer. So we elected to get the 2 largest stones cut and set for
the children. Lexie is getting a pendant and Angus is just having his cut and in
a box so he can choose how to use the stone when he’s a ‘grown up’. A perfect permanent reminder of this trip!
