What happens when two german "Abiturienten" from the same village go out to travel New Zealand? That's what you will see when you are going to read that blog! We (at this point), that is Moritz and Linus from Lauingen, a village close to Braunschweig....
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Mission Beach rainforest
Swimming hole in the Rainforest
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Brisbane to Cairns to Sydney
When I came to Brisbane I started making my way up again. My first destination- Noosa. I spend some time at the beach and did a hike along the coast. The hike was really cool. I enjoyed doing a hike again after all these weeks in Yowah. I started to relax ways more than before. I didn’t do as much as I did at my stops from Sydney to Brisbane. So I did the same in Rainbow beach. A bit of hiking to Carlo sand blow what is a really nice lookout. And spent a bit time at the beach. Everyone was going to Fraser Island from there but I decided not to to safe money for later. Furthermore, I wasn’t too keen for it. So I did the same with the Whitsundays and didn’t even had a stop in Arlie beach. I went up straight to Townsville and stayed there about one week and three of the days on Magnetic Island. A really nice Island where I hiked to a couple of bays and up to “The Fort”. The chance up to it is really high to spot some koalas. So did I- three of them. Up at the fort you have an astonishing view. The next day I hired snorkelling gear for $10 from my hostel and snorkelled at three different bays. The visibility became a bit bad in the last one during a weather change. But it was definitely worth it just because of the first both. I’ve seen heaps of fishes and corals. On my last day I hired a bike and did a trip to the most western point of the Island. The time in Townsville was really nice as well. The hostel was really nice and the people were wonderful. I walked up “Castle Hill”, to the strand and to “Kissing Point”. After Townsville, I had a stop in Rainbow Beach. Did a hike up to a lookout and went to a waterfall in the rainforest. It was amazing. Under the waterfall was kind of a natural pool where you could jump in from 3,5 or 9 metres. My last stop on my way up north was Cairns now. It’s known for the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. The both meet each other at Cape Tribulation where I did a tour to. It was very cool but not enough time at the places where we stopped. I think the highlight of the tour was the included crocodile tour in the end. The Rainforest is really cool but you could see as much as I did in the botanical gardens in Cairns as well. There is a boardwalk that is like the Rainforest. For sure I’ve also done a snorkel tour to the Great Barrier Reef. It was amazing. We had to spots at the outer reef to explore and it’s like a different world. I would have never expected to see that many fishes and corals. I guess the best “thing” what I saw was a shark just swimming by a couple of metres away. That was pretty much the end of my stay in that amazing country. I organised me a lift down the coast to Sydney with some other guys. I had to catch my flight. The guy who offered the lift is a 50 years old Australian (Dave) who had to bring his military bus down to Canberra to get it ready for sale. Dave is a really nice guy who promised me to get down to Sydney in time, but after meeting up and talking about it, it turned out that we have to get it in three days or I would have missed my flight. So Dave was willing to bring me down and we were even 17 hours on the road one day. We arrived the evening before my flight departed and spent the night at the airport to catch my flight the next day.
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The town of Yowah and the fossicking area. It was amazing with the boiiis.
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Yowah- Have I found my fortune?
Like I mentioned in my last post I went to Yowah. A small town in the outback 800 km west from Brisbane. I was looking through the backpacker groups on Facebook when there popped up this post of a guy who asked for some people to go out to Yowah Opal digging. I was a bit bored of traveling and in the mood to settle down at place again. So I told him that I’m interested and gave it a go. I took the train to Charleville and from there the bus to Cunnamulla where I finally met the guy who got me into that whole thing. His name is Daniel and he’s from Germany as well. We stayed overnight in Cunnamulla bought our gears for the digging and food for about a week. Then straight next to the road and hitch hiked within two more days to Yowah. We stayed on the free campsite which provides you everything you need- Toilets, shower (even with hot water out of a bore) and a place to cook in the evening over the fire. We were welcomed by a 50-60 years old guy called Andrew who Daniel knew from the two stays he had there already. Andrew gave us mattresses to sleep on and invited us to come over to his place for a soup in the evening.
Already on the campsite where little pieces with colour in there laying around which was thrown away by other people because it was mostly worthless stuff and/or not cutable. The next day we started the Opal real hunt. We did some noodling what means looking through the soft top layer. And again, there were some bits of colour. Daniel explained me that the Opal miners from like 50- 60 years often just were searching for the pure Opal. All the other stuff they just left behind. But we couldn’t find pieces that are worth to cut. Often, they had cracks, were in a wrong shape or just hadn’t enough Opal on/in them. After another day of doing that we decided to try out the shuffles we brought out there. We started to extend the hole of the Austrian family in town which settled down there for a year because they found quite nice stuff in exactly this hole not long ago. After just 5 minutes of digging Daniel found a really nice piece that we actually could get cut. Discovering this piece motivated us to go on in this hole but even after me digging 3-4 metres deep we couldn’t find more than traces of colour. Even after me coming across an old shaft that was partially filled up again. There wasn’t any opal anymore. So already before I finished my hole Daniel decided to move on and started digging under a tree about 10-15 metres away from me. After like an hour of digging he called me to come over. He showed me a crack in the stone. He found a foldline in the ground what the miners are normally looking for. Opal is formed by water that rinses down silica particles through the stone over thousands of years and a crack/ fold is pretty good and makes the chance even higher to let Opal form.
A couple of days after it started to rain what happened about 18 months ago the last time. It was too heavy for our $15 tents so we had to move and found shelter under a roof on the campsite. The lovely people in town said we could come over if it gets to bad but it didn’t. The night before at the Thursday night dinner in the caravan park in town a guy told us of a street a bit out of Yowah where they used gravel out of one of the mines. We couldn’t go digging anyway so we decided to try out this street. The rain cleaned the stones up a bit so it would be easier to see colour if there is any. We found a few nice pieces and got five stones cut and polished. We got it done by one of the local cutters. He charges us 20 dollars per stone. He reckons that the stones are worth like 100-150 dollars each- depends on the stone. Later the day one of Daniels mates arrived. His name is Kai and he just came over to Australia to go digging for Opal like Daniel. We went out on the Blackgate Rd again the next day and found some more stones to be cut. Back at the fossicking area Kai started a new hole and I finished my hole because it was too dangerous to go deeper. So I began to dig a hole on the other side of Daniels tree because the fold seemed pretty promising. Actually, I found some decent stones but after bashing a nut with the crowbar open (The Opal forms normally inside a stone surrounded of a solid iron stone layer. That’s the way how it appears in Yowah. Because of this, Yowah is a place where a lot of boulder opal comes from). The nut was torn apart and not useable anymore. The hole didn’t really bring us much more just a lot of work and fun- What’s the whole thing about it. You shouldn’t really go there with the thinking of finding the million-dollar stone. Kai just found the clay layer about three metres deep in his hole. So this is normally a good sign, but that was at the end of Kais and my stay and we couldn’t really go on anyway. The reason is obvious. I accidentally chocked of the tree over our hole.
So yeah on one of our last days it rained and we headed out on the Blackgate Rd again. After filling our bucket with a couple of stones Kai suddenly stopped at a one stone- an almost complete nut with a really beautiful bit of colour looking out of the open side. He showed me the piece and I instantly knew that that’s the found we were looking for. We yelled after Daniel (he is kind of the expert in the group) to come over and when he looked at it he was sure as well that this is something more than a $100 stone. We went back to our tents and were really hyped about the stone. The next day we went to our cutter to have a look over it. When we showed it to him he wasn’t really sure what to do with it. Another local guy came into the shop and gave him advice about the spots where to cut it. So he did but ways carefully than the stones before and I saw that even he was a bit nervous.
In the moment, the other guy saw the stone he said he would give us $50 for it, after the first cut he said $200 and after the second one he offered us $1000 but we knew that we can’t say yes to it. We left our cutter with the material and picked it up two days later. The day before Kai was supposed to leave. I think we have kind of found our fortune or to say it in a different way- The money to pay the flights back to Australia to find more of it. But we must take the stones with us to Germany. They are ways more worth over there and we have to find the right buyer first. That could take a few years.
The time there was amazing and I’m really happy that I decided to go there. I think our group worked out really good and because of Daniel, Kai and the friendly locals I had an awesome time there. Happy to go back there sometime.
Even if it seems to just be a place in the middle of nowhere it was really nice to have a break from all the coast stress that I had the weeks before. When we didn’t work we mostly enjoyed our spare time in the artesian spa which only cost $2,50 and is warmed up with the hot water out of the bore. After a while the café in town opened and we could chill there on the veranda eating one or sometimes two portions of chips and charging our phones.
My stay ended with the stay of Kai who had to leave to catch his flight back home. In the morning, he was about to leave the women who should take him close to Brisbane said they would leave town later. We decided spontaneously that we just all go with her. Kai had to go anyway, Daniel was happy to have a longer break and it was a chance to find more people for that adventure and I had to go back to the coast at some point. It was the perfect opportunity for us. After fixing the flat battery and tire we were ready to leave but the woman wasn’t. Cause it was just about to bring the car of the teacher to Ipswich (She had to move there a couple of months before. The last two kids in the Yowah school left with their family. She was unemployed though). We left quite late and had to stop at some point at one point because of all the wildlife coming out. The next day we arrived at the teacher’s place stayed overnight and left the next day to Brisbane where we split up.
#yowah#opal#digging#amazingtime#fun#blackgateroad#haveyoufoundyourfortuneyet?#outback#fossicking#whereisthepocket?#borebaths
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