Fossicking in Powelltown

We managed to get away with the Goulburn Valley Gem Club on a fossicking trip this week end. The trip was well supported with about 10 car loads of people heading up into the hills north east of Powelltown, Victoria.

Powelltown Hall Carpark

Carpark / Clearing near our fossicking location

Bianca, Our Mining Supervisor for the day

The location, once an old Tin mine, was said to have many varieties of Quartz (clear, Smokey and Citrine) as well as Topaz and Tourmaline.

In our car, our being Bianca and Myself, we had Chris and John. As a team we also ended up working the same hole for the day with Margaret joining us after lunch. Working the one hole meant we were able to work over much more material in our sieves and plenty of stone was carries back up to the cars for investigation, not all of it keepers though.

Some of the dense bush we needed to get through to find the creek

Apparently its time for lunch

Some of our haul

Yep, another Leech

In the end we managed to find plenty of quartz, of various colors and quality and some good samples of black Tourmaline. I don't believe we were lucky enough to uncover any Topaz, which i a shame. Still, that just means there is some there for us to find next time. Leeches were the only issue for the day, many of them finding their way over to me for a feed.

Smoky Quartz Points

A Large Smoky Crystal i grabbed for the garden

All in all it was a great day out. Thank you to the Goulburn Valley Gem club and Margaret from the Essendon Lapidary club for a great day out. I am looking forward to the next trip to Stratford.