Armidale to Tenterfield

[DazzaD]

Hi Everyone,

I’m taking the family up to Tenterfield and was hoping someone may be able to point me in the right direction to find anything that shines for my girls. We have done lots of places at Oberon and Nundle but I know that if your not quite in the right spot you spend a lot of time just looking at dirt 😂 we have stopped off at Uralla at the fossicking area but as the kids were not finding anything they were losing interest fast. Is there any places that anyone could share that the kids may might find a little bit of anything.

[Bucket]

Welcome to the forum, DazzaD. Glen Innes is your best bet, call into the visitor formation centre and they should be able to point you in the right direction for public fossicking areas. You should understand that asking members to publicly name their 'good' spots is not something that would be given easily. In the Inverness area, there are a couple of 'pay to dig' places where they supply the equipment and the possible sapphire bearing soil for you to work, all for a fee. With younger kids that may be a better option. I'm not sure if there's any over Glenn Innes way, but it might be worth a bit of searching. Good luck and be prepared for some cooler weather! 

[Findem]

You will find lots of good reading in my Blog. I've only started working on it again in the last few weeks. As most readers will know, Sue and I now live in Lithgow. Fossicking stopped for us in 2012. We miss taking people every Wednesday and nothing like that seems to have taken its place.

[DazzaD]

Thanks Guys for the info, we did manage to find a nice little creek near the side of the road outside Glenn Innes where the girls were finding plenty of Garnets and a few blue sapphires. We then headed out to the Mining Museum at Emmaville. Wow what a collection and Ron there was awesome to talk too. Lastly we went out to Tabulam and Ewingar but just couldn’t find the right spots to hit unfortunately but all in all it was a great trip.

[Findem]

Glad you had such a great time. What you have called garnets are probably zircons. The Yarrow Creek catchment seems to be the only one with garnets and I was never able to discover where they were coming from.
See the last entry in my New England minerals blog.
Findem