My Introduction to the love of fossicking

[elliott thompson]

Hi everyone im 35 and Queensland born and raised my partner and I have a deep seeded interest in gemstones. It started me as a young fella at around 6 or 7 we were living in gympie at the time and there was an amazing older fellow Bill who lived with his wife on Lady Mary terrace, the amount of hours I spent while he tinkered cutting and polishing in his workshop under the house and looking through the overgrown bushes where he threw all the off cuts brings fond and marvelous memories even at such a young age. From there I got a real interest and around the same time I remember my dad and I driving inland just the 2 of us couldn't tell you exactly where or how far south east around the mid 90s we camped for a few nights and on this property the farmer had ploughed acres and acres and there were pieces of agate everywhere exposed and vividly remember excitedly poking along this field picking up pieces with dad and putting them into the old station wagon, the other memory I have of that place was happening along an old dry creek and finding this large green Boulder which we took back to the homestead to be told that we couldn't keep it and i remembered milling around for what seemed like a considerable time to me for him to come back and show us 2 beautiful halves of a lovely amethyst cave.my wife has a similar love but all be it for different experiences her grandfather travelled australia in his bus he was also a jeweler and quite a remarkable man fossicking and documenting what he found where on a map with countless spots cutting his stuff and tinkering away i would love the lesure to one day take the same path and see if many years later these places still exist or accessible. We have both have a great interest and lived in central Queensland for many years our holidays without fail were to the sapphire fields since then life and children have kept us busy and after a short period back on the sunshine coast and apart from the few times collecting agate now find ourselves in the perth hills with a few day trips here and there more for the adventure than the fact we find anything remotely impressive or of value and thats of no honest concern its still a great way to spend some time together on a interest/ hobby. Ps.. sorry for the long winded story. Anyone in sunshine coast Queensland if u go to a place called buderim rainforest and follow the stream along u will be quite shocked to finding the middle of suburbia some lovely agates deep pinks and whites including geodes with lovely thick banded skins and well formed crystals