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The horses and cattle roam freely along the paved main street and pickup trucks—called “utes,” pronounced “yoots,” short for “utility vechicles”—are the primary mode of transport. The town has a pub, a drive-thru beer/wine shack of corrugated tin, a caravan park and a few general stores. The place was a model of rustic living and you could have easily mistaken the place for a Disney set.

This area has the largest sapphire field in the Southern Hemisphere with a fair amount of rubies and other precious jewels scattered in. When an old highway was recently dug up, more than $1 million dollars AUD of sapphires were found in the bed.

In 1993, a couple of novices found a sapphire worth $300,000 AUD. Also found was a 202 ct. Stonebridge “parti-colored” sapphire, and the famous “Heads of Presidents” that were cut into busts of Lincoln, Washington, Eisenhower and Jefferson. They now rest in the Smithsonian Institute. There are also rubies and six-sided crystals called Tomahawk Tigers hidden out there.

The main purpose of my visit was to fossick for gems. To fossick is to search unsystematically for mineral deposits, usually over ground previously worked by others.

I was reminded that you need a permit to hunt around the area, and was sternly warned that it’s best not to wander into unknown territory. Claim jumpers are known to get shot at from time to time. Hiring a respected guide is the best way to stay out of trouble and to increase your odds of finding gems.

Andrew, the proprietor of the bed and breakfast I stayed in, was my guide into the middle of the desert and onto his claim. He was a fun-loving bloke who always had a smile on his face and a gleam of gems in his eyes. He had a beat-up jeep that seated about eight, heaps of water tanks strapped to the roof, and a keen willingness to help me find sapphires.

On both visits, he agreed to meet early the next morning for the ride out to his claim about an hour away. It gets well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit out there by noon.

Luckily I didn’t have a bad back, sensitive kidneys or tender backside, as the path to his claim was a bouncing trip on dirt roads, through dry creek beds, under low-hanging branches, over boulders and around cows. And mates, it smelled like Outback.

It is hard to describe, but it was an arid, dusty—not pungent—earthy smell. Human sounds were non-existent and except for an occasional breath of air moving tree branches, there was silence. For me, I felt the soul of the place and people say that you either feel welcome or very uncomfortable out there—there’s no in-between.

We stopped and our doors swung open to a brown wasteland loaded with a fortune in jewels. Andrew pointed to my digging location and I grabbed up a pick, chose a shovel and gathered two buckets. The screens, sieves, barrels of water and wallabies were already on the site.

Wallabies are the contraptions used after screening and sifting the gem-laden soil. You place your sieve into the basket of the rig and use the lever to dip the screen into the muddy water of a half-cut 55-gallon drum until you rinse away the majority of the dirt. Then you take the remains, flip it upside down onto a flat surface and search for hidden beauties.

Andrew made sure I could identify sapphires from worthless quartz by starting me with a “seeded” pan. I took right to it and eventually found about $2,000 AUD worth of stones in twelve hours. It’s hard work, but very addicting.

On top of being a great guide, the man cooked a mean “smoko” with a breakfast/lunch of bacon, eggs, Billy tea, damper bread and sweets. He prepared the meal over a camp fire and fried the eggs and bacon on an old plow disc. The Billy tea topped off the mid-morning treat.

Billy tea is plain tea made in a five-gallon bucket with the loose leaves thrown into the boiling water. To avoid dipping out a tin cup full of leaves with your brew, he swung the bucket like a propeller and the leaves settled to the bottom of the can. Damper bread is a staple of Outback food and it’s usually made in a metal pan over an open fire, then it is wrapped in a damp cloth—hence damper—to keep it from getting too hard and loaded into saddlebags. It was mighty tasty.

Nights after digging, I sampled a few pints of frosty beer with my brother at the Rubyvale Pub. One word of caution; when you push past the swinging front doors of the Outback pubs, the place will probably go dead quiet. You will be examined in a very thorough manner and then, almost as quickly as the place went silent, the patrons will go about their business of drinking. Once they overhear your accents, the place gets mighty friendly.

I was tempted to buy a 30 sq.-meter claim advertised on the wall of the pub for $2,000 AUD. Unfortunately, it was an underground claim and I wasn’t too keen on that.

James Postell is a technical writer, traveler and journalist. His book Daytrips Eastern Australia was recently released and he is currently researching a book on Florida. He has traveled the world with this wife, and is full of stories from Australia, Bali and New Zealand.

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