This morning at Springsure RH & CP, my outside sensor showed plus 8.1° at 7:20am.

I am still having a minor problem,getting used to the overnight temperature, Marg has discarded her sleeping bag and I think that I may do that tonight.
As we have only 120kms to Sapphire, I didn't do any packing yesterday,we do have to empty the 'shitter' on the way out of Springsure. I checked out the dump point yesterday and it has easy access, Springsure is a RV Friendly town.

Well, we left Springsure at 8:20am, and visited the Dump Point to empty the 'shitter', everything went accordingly to plan. The drive to Emerald was uneventful, we stopped at Coles Emerald to do some shopping, only problem is, that Emerald closes down on a Sunday, so we will do a day trip back there tomorrow, it is only 60kms, so no big deal. We arrived at Sapphire at 10:24am, according to our receipt, the Sunday market was in full swing, so we setup camp roughly then went over to the Market at 11:30, the market closes at 12:00pm, so we didn't see too much or buy anything, the good thing is it is open next Sunday, so we will be there a lot earlier.
I finish setting up camp, the awning, the Sat Dish, the clothes hoist and the chairs, as we are setting for 8 nights, I may even have to put the sunshade. I am sitting here watching the V8 supercars in shorts and shirt, it is beautiful outside at 24.8°. I think that 90% of the caravan park are playing 'disc bowls', we may play next Sunday. We have done 2 loads of washing and that is drying in the SUN. Marg is lazing outside under the awning, reading.

Tomorrow, we are off to Emerald to do some shopping and sightseeing.

This morning at Blue Gem CP, Sapphire, my outside sensor showed 10.8° at 7:00am.

I slept better last night, Marg didn't, I left my laptop on after recording the Tour de France on SBS, and she laid awake waiting for it, to turn off, it didn't, my fault.
We left at 9am to drive into Emerald to shop at Coles, it was foggy the whole way in. We shopped at Coles and then visited a car wash and gave the mighty Navara a quick high pressure rinse. It is only 55kms from Sapphire to Emerald, so it is a quick trip in and out.
Back at camp, after we unpacked the shopping, we visited Armfest sapphires and bought a bucket of wash for $20 and found some small sapphires and a couple of larger 'bomb' sapphires.

While relaxing out outside the van, we were 'attacked' by the rainbow lorikeets, well I did lure them to us by feeding them bread. They are extremely tame.

After dinner, we went to the Sapphire Town Hall, well actually, just a Hall, and played Bingo. It was a top night at Bingo, I lost and Marg won twice, I was so close but no cigar.

Tomorrow, we are off to Rubyvale to sieve through some bucket of wash.

This morning at Blue Gem CP, Sapphire, my outside sensor showed 8.9° at 7:10am.

We both slept well last night.
It was foggy this morning, so it was sheets and towels washing day. We left at 10am to drive into Rubyvale (10kms from Sapphire) to do some sightseeing, it turned out to be the dearest day so far this trip. As we drove into Rubyvale, Marg spotted Monique's Mine, so we headed there and bought 3 buckets of wash, again we got some small sapphires and some larger 'bomb' sapphires.

Back into Rubyvale for some lunch and a coffee, we stopped at Muggacino and after parting with over a $1,000, we left. This was the dearest lunch that I have ever spent. Ohhhhh, did I tell you that Marg also got a ring with the lunch.

Tomorrow same as today, we are off to Rubyvale to sieve through some bucket of wash and NOT BUYING A RING.

This morning at Blue Gem CP, Sapphire, my outside sensor showed 8.6° at 6:55am.

It wasn't foggy but overcast this morning. We left at 10am to drive to Monique's Mine in Rubyvale to sieve through 3 buckets of wash. As it was overcast, we brought the small wash back to camp, so Marg could check out the wash in the sun later. We went back to Gunther's (Muggaccinos Rubyvale) for another coffee and an absolute mouth watering homemade Strudel, then stopped at Pat's Gems, where I brought a GemFest polo shirt.
We spent the afternoon in the sun, with Marg sieving through the wash from this morning, I started reading John Grisham's The Brethren on my kindle. We now have new neighbours out the back (David and Julie from SA) and next door neighbours (Rob and Martine members of the Caravanners Forum), a lovely couple with 2 young kids and a dog (Skylar).

Tomorrow same as today, we are off to Rubyvale to sieve through some more bucket of wash.

What's this minus 1.7° at Blue Gem CP at 6:55am, I thought that we left the minus temperatures back in NSW.


It was one of those mornings, frosty, sunny, no clouds and the sky is blue as blue, that's pretty blue. We plan to leave about 9:30am and visit "Willy's Wash" in Rubyvale, as recommended by Gunther.
We arrived at Willy's about 9:30am, we were the first for the day, in beautiful sunshine, we sieved through 2 buckets of wash, while Willy had a couple of chilled refreshers. Marg was very happy with the quality of the sapphires, so we brought another 2 buckets of wash. All in all, we got 6 good cutters and heaps of small cutters. While there, we met George and Sonia, who live full time in their van, after we all finished, we adjourned back to Gunthers for coffee and strudel and a chat. It was a very pleasant meeting. We will catch up with them, when we get to Southport.
On the way back to camp, we visited M&M Sapphires and brought a ring box and some nice crystal for me, closer to camp, we then stopped at Kathy's Casings and didn't buy anything from her. The afternoon was spent just bumming around camp and we bought hamburgers for dinner. They were yumma.

Tomorrow we are going into Emerald to visit the NAB, shock horror, we are running low on money. Strange that.

I have found some emoticons.

I am sick of these negative temperatures, we were over them in NSW, now they are back to haunt us.

It was one of those mornings, cold and overcast. We plan to leave about 9:45am and visit the big smoke - Emerald.
We arrived at the NAB's Emerald branch about 10:15am, withdrew some money and then went over to Brumby's Bread shop for Marg's favourite Date loaf, then walked through Centro Emerald Village. Did some food shopping at Woollies and tried to buy a coffee, waited for 10 minutes and still didn't get served so left.

Back at camp, had a quiet afternoon, I managed to close my eyes and lose about 1.5 hours somewhere, finally stayed awake long enough to do some reading. Outside the sun was out but the wind was cool. Today's top was only 20.7°.

Tomorrow we are going back to Willy's wash.

I am STILL sick of these negative temperatures, we were over them in NSW, now they are back to haunt us.

It was one of those mornings, frosty, sunny, no clouds and the sky is blue as blue, that's pretty blue. We plan to leave about 9:30am and visit "Willy's Wash" in Rubyvale, as recommended by Gunter.
We arrived at Willy's about 9:30am, we were the second couple for the day, in beautiful sunshine, we sieved through 2 buckets of wash, while Willy had a couple of glasses of milk, I think that Kahlua may have been in it. Marg was again very happy with the quality of the sapphires, so we brought another 2 bags of wash to take with us, Marg will probably look through the wash at Dicky or Southport. When she is in the mood. All in all, we got 5 good cutters and heaps of small cutters. We went back to Muggachinno for more coffee and strudel. We showed Gunter what we thought was a 'star sapphire', but both Willy and Gunter said that it wasn't. Gunter showed us one of his 'star sapphire' with a price too good to refuse, we purchased Gunter's 5 carat 'star sapphire'. We said our goodbyes to Gunter and his neighbour, we never did find out her name, we will have to ask next year.
Before leaving Rubyvale, Marg and I visited the Miner's Heritage and did a tour of the underground mine, that was awesome ($25 for 2). We also bought a sapphire pendant for our niece's 21st birthday. (Brittany if you read this, it cost a Million dollars). On the way back to camp, I had to stop at the bottle shop out in the middle of nowhere. We also stopped again at M&M Sapphires and bought another ring box for Mum's birthday.

Back at camp, Marg had the starts of a migraine headache and went to bed and tried to sleep, I crawlled under the van and secured the 'empty' fresh water tank, so it will not move, I will get Phil to fix it when we get home, as I said previously, one of the two brackets, broke, so I will get 4 brackets welded on.

Tomorrow we are going across the road to the Sunday Markets. We have stuff to buy.

A better morning, it was at least in the positive.

We had a leisurely day, as we are leaving tomorrow, we visitied the Sunday Markets across from the caravan park on the Sapphire Footy Ground. As promised last week, we tracked down the guy we saw last Sunday, who makes the gem display cases, we bought a 50 gem case and a polished gem display case. We took Gunter's 'star sapphire' to Roy and Helen, Marg is getting them to set the sapphire into a ring. I think that is the end of spending, well for today anyway. I think that we have pumped a couple of grand into the local Sapphire/Rubyvale economy. I am sure when we return next year, we might do similar.
I am slowly packing up bits and pieces, while Marg is playing with her rocks. sorry stones, sorry gems.
We met our new neighbour Jenny who is a solo traveller. A lovely lady with great stories.

Tomorrow we are off to Southside Top Tourist park at Rockhampton for an overnighter. 321kms.