Today's fossicking trip was organised again by Jamo, who couldn't join us due to work commitments, he is a fellow member of the Aussie Lapidary forum.
We left home at 6:55am and drove 83kms to Powelltown arriving at 8:50am for our 9am meet up with some of our Aussie Sapphire forum members(Lapis, Rustyryan, Alleycat, Bucket, Woodsy and Havarim) plus Kevin and another family from the Warragul Gem Club.
Our convoy of 7 cars left for the fossicking area about 9am with Lapis leading us to the turnoff. When Lapis stopped at the turnoff, Marg and I lead the convoy along the gravel 'road' to 'our valet parking' spot. Strange the valets weren't there. Within a minute or so, we were all parked and getting organised.

At this stage I must lodge a protest, while I was 'modestly' changing into my pastel floral wetsuit, the paparazzi appeared from nowhere and were taking photos of me (The fossicking fashion trendsetter). I was horrified and aghast. Well maybe not.

Last October when we last visited here, Marg and I were the only two who went down stream to fossick. Today, everyone went down stream. It was great how we all found a few meters of creek and dug there, some moved to other areas but on the whole, we were all within 20 meters. We were constantly talking to each other and Marg and I had a great time. I assume that the others enjoyed themselves as well.

As Marg broke her back last November and is recovering very well, we bought her a cheap chair to sit in the creek, so she doesn't have to move much. I fill up the sieve and hand it to her, then she sorts the 'wheat from the chaff' and places the 'pretty stones' in our backpack, which is close by. This setup worked very well and we will use it in our future fossickings.

Last trip, we had some leeches decide to attach themselves to us. This trip they failed to arrive, in fact, there were no animals of any type, to scare us. I expected to see leeches and maybe a snake, but none appeared, only two worms in a sieve which scared Marg and they were worms NOT leeches. Standing in the water was no problem, just cool, but you didn't notice it. The only downer, if any, was the overcast sky, which made it difficult for Marg to see the 'pretty rocks' in the sieve, any suitable stones that Marg saw, she put them in our back pack. All I know the backpack was bloody heavy to carry back to the cars. Which was good.

About 12:30pm, Marg and I and Bucket and his nephew headed back to the parking area to have lunch. Alleycat, Lapis, rustyryan and Woodsy were already there having lunch. We chatted some more and ate lunch and checked out some of the stones, the group had found. Alleycat gave me some fossicking mud maps for Broken Hill and showed us some of his amethyst that he found there. After lunch, Marg and I packed up and headed homewards about 1:30pm.

We stopped at the Neerim bakery for a coffee and cake and the rains arrived and stayed for the major portion of the trip home, it bucketed down. We arrived home all safe and sound and feeling tired about 3:30pm.

Marg and I had a great day and it was also great to put a face to more ALFers (Members of the Aussie Lapidary Forum).

Our tally for the day was Smoky quartz, quartz crystals, citrine, a few small topaz and quite a few small black tourmaline upto 1.5" in length.

Photos of our gems will be posted, if we ever see the sun again, currently, it is bucketing down in downtown Mordialloc.