Anakie, Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Anakie	Village
Central Highlands Region	Region
Queensland	State
Australia	Country

Anakie is 309kms west of Rockhampton and 375kms east of Longreach on the Capricorn Highway. At 43kms west of Emerald, a crossroad leads to Anakie township and to the north a sealed road leads 18kms to the small townships of Sapphire and Rubyvale, from where a network of unsealed roads and tracks connect the various mining and fossicking localities. Most are suitable for conventional vehicles except after rain.

Sapphire, Scrub Lead, Rubyvale, Divide and Reward are five of six areas of Designated Fossicking Land on the central Queensland sapphire fields where recreational and tourist fossicking is possible under simple Fossickers Licences without the need to contact the relevant landowners. However, certain types of commercial mining tenures are also allowed in these areas. To provide areas where recreational fossickers and tourists can search for stones without any competition from commercial mining, several Fossicking Areas have also been established over certain areas of mainly shallow wash.

The Fossicking Areas (Tomahawk Creek, Middle Ridge, Big Bessie, Graves Hill, Glenalva) are localities set aside for fossickers alone and no further commercial mining tenures have been issued over them. The Designated Fossicking Land (Divide, Rubyvale, Scrub Lead, Sapphire, Reward, Willows) allow both fossicking and specified commercial mining tenures.

Golden yellow, orange and green sapphires have been found up to 70 carats in size. Also star and parti-coloured.

Sapphires were first discovered at Anakie in 1873. According to Sankey , "The Sapphires at Anakie are of every shade of blue, of green and of yellow, many of the yellows and greens are equal in quality to anything the world produces, and, in my opinion, no finer gems exist than the brilliant limpid-yellow sapphires of Queensland. They combine the brilliancy of the diamond with most beautiful shades of rich golden-yellow, and occasionally appearing of true orange colour. The green sapphires are most remarkable for the great variety of their tints, ranging from very pale green through all the shades of bronze, olive, and russet to bright green, bordering closely on the emerald, and continuing into the deepest luscious greens, and all combined with brilliancy."

Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anakie,_Queensland
Wikidata ID:	Q2206892

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References