Rubyvale

<Rémi>
On the drive to Rubyvale, about 200km from Longreach, we had a problem - the bike rack mounting brackets snapped off at the pins.
Luckily the bikes fell onto the A frame of the caravan which is where we found them.

 

 

Mum & Dad put the bikes into the caravan where the table normally is and then we detoured to Emerald to get the bracket fixed. 

Dad said that we were really lucky as we found somewhere that fixed it that afternoon and we were on our way to Rubyvale again.

Rubyvale is at "C".  Not too far from Emerald.

 

 

After staying the night at Rubyvale, we went fossicking for sapphires.
Sapphires are a gemstone that look like glass and come in a variety of colours.  Rubies are actually red sapphires.  Sapphires are found all through this area.

The left is a Ruby (Red Sapphire) and he right a common sapphire

Bronze Sapphire

We did a sapphire mine tour and fossicked for a couple of hours.


This coloured rock is all through this area

This is looking up the air shaft of the mine

 Fossicking...

We were taught how to fossick correctly

Mum was the most successful, but no-one found much of any value. 

These are all sapphires that we found

 

After the fossicking we drove towards Mackay on the Queensland Coast. 

 

It was a long drive, made longer by cows on the road....

also by two really large 7.5m wide loads (that is as wide as both lanes!)....

 

 

they had to move over for us to pass.

 

We saw lots of coal mines on our travels.

 

 

 This is a conveyor carrying coal

There were lots of super long trains taking the coal from the mines to Mackay. 

 

 

At Mackay we went to look at the Port where they stockpile the coal and then load it into ships.