All that glitters
The topaz is so easy to find even the bowerbirds fill their nests with it. This explains why I’m sitting starry-eyed in the middle of a dusty creek bed at noon, digging and sifting and waiting to slam my pick into something big and crystalline. Even the blazing north Queensland sun can’t temper my gem fever, which has lured me to O’Brien’s Creek, a six-hour drive west of Cairns.
It’s renowned in fossicking circles as one of the best places in Australia to unearth gem-quality topaz (and aquamarine, citrine and smoky quartz too). The idea of striking it lucky here has enormous appeal. Twenty years ago the gems at O’Brien’s Creek were supposedly ankle-deep, and local rockhound Simon Harrison jokes that he used to have to hide behind trees to stop the topaz jumping out at him.
These tall tales hit their mark, bolstering my little band of newbie fossickers as we set off into the scrub, armed with a mud map and a bunch of borrowed tools. The gemfield at O’Brien’s Creek seems
