Who was at the club for the 40th Anniversary?
Carol S recently received an interesting email, which I will share below, but first a little history for those of you that are newer to the club, meaning those that joined after 2006! I am one of those newer members, only joining in 2014. I was however at the club when they celebrated their 50th […]
Carol S recently received an interesting email, which I will share below, but first a little history for those of you that are newer to the club, meaning those that joined after 2006!
I am one of those newer members, only joining in 2014. I was however at the club when they celebrated their 50th anniversary, which was celebrate in style with a party, cake, false gold, rock related quizzes and a time capsule.
Apparently for the 40th anniversary there was a bottle of port with the NBLC logo, and it appears that an unopened bottle has been found by a shooter/fossicker…….
See copy of the email below:
Good morning,
Would your club be able to assist me with locating a reputable faceting service in Brisbane.
I was lucky enough to find, what I assume is a Blue Topaz shard from a recent trip to Mount Surprise. It is not a huge stone however, I think it is big enough to have faceted into a nice sized piece. Please see photo below.
I was made aware of your club after a hunting trip to a sheep station in Quilpie. I assume one of your members left a NBLC labeled, full bottle of port in the shears quarters. I knew nothing of Lapidary or even heard the word before this….
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Thanks and regards,
Andrew
Now for some club participation during lockdown – questions:
- Were you at the 40th Anniversary, if so can you tell us any other fun things that happened?
- Do you think the item in the photograph is Topaz? If not, what else would you suggest it is?
- Who has been fossicking in that area and may have left the bottle there?
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Raymond Wilson says:
Firstly, having been on a number of travelling field trips, where having a port after dinner, sitting around an open fire, is one of the simple enjoyable things that occur, I find it hard to think that any of the members with whom I have shared a drink around a camp fire,
would have deliberately left a full bottle of port – maybe I underestimate the benevolence of my fellow travellers.
We have travelled in convoy twice in reasonably recent times through Quilpie – the first was in 2009 when we did an opal focused field trip. We stopped at Quilpie for several days and fossicked at the public fossicking grounds outside of Quilpie. Incidentally on this trip we also camped for several days at Cooper’s Creek near Windora and I recall that Milton Fox was excited to see the Cooper Creek flowing water. I think he said he first saw the Cooper Creek in the 1950s and had been there several times but it wasn’t until 2009 that he had seen it flowing.
The second time we travelled through Quilpie was 2014 when we went from Charleville to Quilpie and then to Longreach via Jundah.
The area the stone was found in, is correct location to find blue topaz. However, from the photo it could also be glass. Identifying stones from a single photo is difficult and one could be wrong as many times as being correct.
mcoyle says:
My first thought was glass but as Ray said it would need to be sighted by an expert.