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The year was 1970, in Deception Bay Queensland I joined my class in an excursion to the parade ground. The ground was covered in bauxite, my teacher at the time told us they find opal in bauxite, I am not sure if this is true. On that day I found my first gem, it was what my teacher called an Olivine, it was about an inch long by half inch wide and very green, I thought I was in heaven, to a child of 8 it was like finding treasure. It wasn't exactly a facetable stone, however it was just enough to get me hooked on gem hunting.

From there my family moved many times, fortunately for me a lot of the places we moved to were rich in gems. In 1973 we moved to a small town called Barraba in the New England area of New South Wales. There I found a  285 Carat approx Garnet, still not cuttable, although I have never cut a window in to find out. Below is a picture of this garnet and scanned in its actual size.

In 1975 we moved up to Mt Isa where I found an assortment of different gems and minerals, Chalcopyrite, Clear Quartz and Amethyst just to name a few.

It wasn't till 1992 that I found out how a gem was facetted, I was totally in awe watching a facetor at work. It all came about from packing citrus at a town near Emerald in Central Queensland. I had the day off so decided to visit Anakie Sapphire Fields, from that day forward I was truly lost in a world of Gems. Within a week I had moved there, and was living in a tent for 8 weeks at a fossicking area called Graves Hill. Everyday I dug, sieved and found small Sapphires and Zircons, I learnt a lot from the old timers, watching and asking questions. 

Then along came an opportunity of a life time, I was offered a job to manage a tourist park at the town of Sapphire, The Ransom Mine. The owner Peter needed someone to manage his park while he worked his claim at Deep Lead. At that time his wife was the park facetor, so I watched and cared for the tourist's needs. I didn't learn to facet then as there was only one Facet Machine available.

It wasn't till 1998 that I purchased my first Facet Machine an old Agatemaster, I thought after all the observing that I had done at the park that I would be able to cut a real sparkler first off. Was I wrong, my first stone was indescribable, I knew then that this was going to be harder then it looked. However I proceeded to teach myself to facet, with the help of a few books and basic patterns. I spent endless hours grinding and polishing, and not to mention a lot of frustration. But in the end I had a sparkler to admire, this was what they call a Moranbah Diamond or a very hard quartz, but full of fire.

My First Facet Machine -  Agatemaster

From there I upgrade to a Gemmaster Facet Machine and haven't looked back since. Gemmaster is Manufactured in Adelaide South Australia by Shelley Lapidary.

This is my new Facet Machine - Gemmaster

I have joined a Gem Club and now begun learning to Cabochon, below is my first attempt on a Rhodonite.

My second attempt was a great experience, I started with a piece of Petrified Wood, it started out the same size as the Rhodonite. I knew it had a few cracks through it, but decided to go ahead with it anyway. The cracks did prove to be a problem, after getting the oval shape and gradually bringing it in, 2 chunks came away from the base. After accessing the situation I decided to try to freeform my second stone, I felt a sense of pride at what I produced, the experienced cabbers in the Gem Club were astounded, they said I got the perfect dome. It was hard to cut when they kept taking it away from me to show everyone else how the new girl was going. Below is the end result, you can still see one crack in the top, but I didn't let that discourage me.

I hope you enjoy your visit to my small home on the web, I will be adding new things to my pages at regular intervals.

Take Care All

Deb