Before fossicking at Amethyst Castle, you need to obtain permission from the Ivanhoe Mine.
Busy day, we are off to Amethyst Castle about 130kms south of Cloncurry. I set the alarm for 6am, so we could get organised and leave about 8am. It took 2
hours, because Marg didn't get up until 7am, then we went on the internet etc. We finally got away at 7:58am and headed towards Mt Isa for 12kms when we
turned left onto the Cloncurry Dajarra Road for 45kms when we turned left and headed toward Kuridala on the Selwyn Road. We past the Kuridala turnoff and
continued for a further 42kms, eventually arriving at the Amethyst Castle at 10:02am. We drove to the southern side of the hill and that is where we found
the amethyst as directed by Nathan from our
Fossicking Forum, that's where we found heaps of dark
purple amethyst. We found a tailgate full, about 1.5 Woollies bags. While Marg was busy checking out the amethyst, I turned into Sir Edmund Hillary and climbed
Amethyst Castle, the view was absolutely brilliant. I was upset a tad, as each time I tried for a panoranic photo, they didn't gell. I took some photos of
the mighty Navara and Marg using my normal camera. The hill is covered in quartz and amethyst, it is everywhere but varies in quality.
After spending 1.5 hours there, we had our fill of amethyst and headed homeward, stopping at Kuridala Amethyst on the way. By this time, the rain was very
light, but persistent. The red dusty road was slowly turning to 'light' mud, you could hear it hitting the mudguards. We hummed and harred, whether to visit Kuridala
Amethyst or not, but as we were in the area we decided too. The only problem was that someone had pushed a new graded road through and we couldn't find the gate,
which leads to the goat track which finishes at the amethyst field. After a few tries, I saw a track that looked familar but as we approached a steep dry creek
crossing we stopped and did a U turn. So disappointed that we couldn't find the Kuridala Amethyst, we now headed back to Cloncurry and our camp.
The couple of drops of rain stopped, the overcast skies cleared and it became quite warm driving back. We stopped at Woollies for some supplies that we (aka Marg)
forgot yesterday and also stopped at the pub for some cans of chilled refresher. Back at camp we washed todays haul of amethyst and then we both had beautiful showers
(separately of course). We are now sitting outside the fiver, Marg is talking to Luke (son #2) on her iPad, while I am updating our website, the sun is slowly sinking
and I need to try out, another one of those 'chilled refreshers'.
Dinner for me is frozen pizza and Marg will have a cheese jaffle, nothing too complicated as we are tired after our fossicking. I have the Sat Dish working correctly, so a quiet night watching TV is in order.
Tomorrow we are off to Sunset Mine near Mary Kathleen, to fossick for 'pretty rocks'.
