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Sunday 27 October 2013

THE CROSSING, YARROW CREEK NEAR GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

THE CROSSING, YARROW CREEK NEAR GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

The Crossing (C), The Cascades (L) and the Black Jack Hole (R)
Readers will have noticed that we have given names to the various locations along Yarrow Creek where we have taken fossicking groups over the years. There are 14 named places and this has turned out to be a useful way of describing where particular gems have been found or to let regulars know where we intended to go next week.

The Crossing is one of the first places to which I took groups for Minerama field trips. It marks the point where 2 wheel drive vehicles can go no further and even 4 wheel drives would have trouble with it today. The landowner now uses the place we know as the Upper Crossing

The finds that started it all. March 2007
I had not paid a great deal of attention to this spot believing it to have been well worked over on those earlier trips, until I observed a fossicker on another trip removing a few rocks from a hole in the bed of the creek. He had some nice gems, including some topaz, and I determined to pay it a visit on one of our regular Glen Innes Baptist Church outings. It was then that I realised what we had been missing.

9 carat garnet September 2007
January 2008
There is a series of cracks running across the creek and each of these has been followed under the bank until the overburden has become too great.   There are also several holes jammed up with granite boulders which have yet to be cleared out, if they ever can be. 
We always seemed to be beaten by a combination of factors – the weight of the rocks, the depth of the water and the problem of where to put the rocks if we ever got them out. Maybe future fossickers will succeed where we have failed.

There are other possible traps in old channels or beneath deep sand. Who knows?

30 carat sapphire January 2000



Finds from my last fossicking day at The Crossing - February 2012

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