Gold miners panning for gold could also find colour gemstones in their dish while prospecting, though they did not always identify them as gems suitable for cutting and polishing. They had to seek advice to identify the gems, as some, such as the colourless, transparent rock crystal quartz, widespread in Victoria, would often be mistaken for diamond. This is a common occurrence of misidentification today.
Diamonds were one of the more significant finds. While diamonds have been found in several locations around Victoria, one of the more significant alluvial deposits was around central Victoria, including the Beechworth district. Estimates suggest that hundreds of diamonds were found in regional Victoria during the gold rush and the early twentieth century. These diamonds are mostly yellow, and their source rock has not been identified.
Sapphires, coloured varieties of the mineral corundum, were found around the same time as diamonds and are much more widespread. These are commonly blue in colour with green, yellow, brown and purple sapphires also having been found. Pink sapphires are much rarer. Although crystal fragments up to 2cm or more in length have been mentioned, most are small, often less than 5mm in diameter and usually water-worn and rounded in shape. Whole crystals are rare.
Rubies are red coloured corundum gems. While they have been found in places such as Cardinia Creek and near Trentham, they are extremely rare.
Quartz gems are common across Victoria, and they were the usual gems and crystals found by the gold miners. Colourless and transparent rock crystal, purple amethyst and yellow citrine have all been recovered by fossicking and prospecting, while the brown (cairngorm) and black (morion) smoky quartz are the most common of the quartz varieties.
Gold mining in Victoria is commonly associated with quartz reefs, and it is probable that much rock crystal quartz was crushed during mining to release the gold. Gold specimens on quartz crystals would be a rare collector’s item.
One spectacular quartz crystal from Victoria is the ‘Crystal King’, a large rock crystal that was faceted by the legendary facet or Alex Amiss. The original crystal came from the King Crystal Mine in the Strathbogie Ranges of central Victoria and weighed about 14.5 kg before cutting.
Carefully avoiding a fracture in the centre of the quartz, Amiss cut out the largest transparent section, which he faceted into a gem of 8,510 carats with 196 facets.
This gem is sometimes on display at the Melbourne Museum alongside other gem minerals from Victoria and elsewhere.
Other Victorian Gems include the colourless and blue topaz; multicoloured tourmaline, as well as the more common black tourmaline, also known as schorl; zircons of various colours, such as red, brown and orange; garnets; peridot, and the curious ‘eye agates’ which consist of banded carbonate concretions.
Blue topaz is of interest as it is rare in nature; the vast majority of blue topaz in modern jewellery has been produced by artificial irradiation and heat treatment.
The broad variety of gems found in Victoria during the second half of the 19th century led to some speculation that the gems could be commercially exploited. As it turned out, the gems discovered, with few exceptions, did not occur in commercial quantities.
Except for the mining of piezo electric quartz from the King Crystal Mine, some mining of blue turquoise near Cheshunt in central Victoria for a few years from the 1890’s, and some extraction of smoky quartz crystals from the Mooralla Gemstone Reserve, there has not been significant commercial mining of gems
in Victoria.
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