Lismore GEMFEST 2013

Back from another trip to Hospital for my daughter meant that we were ready to go out and enjoy the late Autumn sunshine. It was good timing too because Lismore Gemfest had started for the weekend.

Gemfest is a lovely combination of professional and amateur sellers of gems, minerals, fossils and jewelry. I found Frank, the fellow from Sydney that I'd bought some good mineral specimens off last year so I added some more to my collection. Frank is an interesting seller because he sells what he finds and what he finds is in Australia, so you know you are getting local examples. Mind you my collection is really just a selection of boring looking minerals with very little value. For instance this time I got hold of some muscovite, tourmaline, wolframite and epidote - quite valueless but interesting to me. The value is in the fun of collecting.

Again, this year Gemfest was full of great diversity of sellers and some good food stalls. I enjoyed my steak sandwich for lunch. I managed to take a few snaps of the end of Saturday but I forgot to take pictures inside the professional dealers area. Oh, well. Something to do next year. In the mean time here are a few snaps:

Blog update #3

I’m getting a bit slack with new blog posts at the moment. The biggest problem I’m having is staying focussed enough to write a small spiel on a single topic. The 34th International Geological Congress in Brisbane last year resulted in a lot of new material relevant to the New England and Northern Rivers areas. So much so that I don’t know where to start!

Looking into the coming weeks (and months) I’d like to provide comments on research by Gideon Rosenbaum on Oroclines of the New England Orogen, Ben Cohen on Cenozoic intraplate volcanism and specifically information on the Main Range Volcanics and its implications south of the Queensland Border, David Branagan on Australias geologist history, plus others.

The above topics are additional to ones I really want to get to as soon as I can such as the Demon Fault, Quaternary sedimentation in the Richmond River Valley, the Tooloom gold fields as well as historical alluvial tin mining in the same area. I need to continue to discuss further aspects of the stratigraphy of the Clarence-Moreton Basin, I also really want to discuss the Mount Warning Central Complex. There just does not seem to be enough time in the day to write about all the geological things this region has to offer.

I'm also pleased that I've been able to be involved, albeit on a mainly strategic level with a local groundwater study, hopefully, in time I'll be able to write something on that... assuming we actually discover something of interest. 

As well as all of the above, the Bigscrub Landcare Group is also about to publish an article which I wrote on the volcanic geology of the region, nice to see how many different groups seem interested in what I'm keen on and are very complimentary about my writing. People are too kind!

Since starting this blog in 2011 I’ve had nearly 25 000 page views. I also vainly ‘google’ a few generic terms and find that the blog frequently comes up quite high in the search results. I’m sort of pleased with that. Of course please feel free to post a comment... especially if I'm wrong about something!

Well… I’ll get started on some more blog posts soon! In the mean time I just want to thank you for reading . I hope that people continue to find it interesting and useful. 

Lismore GEMFEST 2012

This year I was able to visit the gem festival GEMFEST in Lismore. I had never been before and I must say that I was very impressed! The number of exhibitors was incredible. I was told it is the biggest gem and lapidary show in New South Wales... or was it Australia? I can believe either. It is a lapidary delight!... even for someone like me who, surprisingly, is not really into gems.

The weather was wonderful, the people friendly, the curry stall smelled great. It was nice to see activities for the kids and exhibitions on using various equipment. The variety of exhibitors was large too, from hippie jewels and alternative uses for crystals to fossils, gems and obscure minerals. My interest was on the less shiny things, on the fossils and unpolished and uncut minerals.

I was struck by the number of specimens, especially fossils, that come from Morocco (in north Africa). But, if you are aware of the most famous paleontological sites in the world this will not be a surprise. Morocco has wondrous numbers and variety of exquisitely preserved Permian aged sea life especially Trilobites. However, my favourite was actually not super expensive but something I still could not afford. It was both sides of some Miocene? aged mudstone that revealed a wonderful small fish and some leaves in the same layer. The vendor had identified the fish and plant but I cannot remember what they were. But, it was a perfect example of identifying the environment in which the fish lived: a still water environment probably a late or maybe an estuary. And the specimen just looked stunning.

Getting late on day one.
Just one of the Vendor avenues.

Since there was so much I could have bought if I had a spare $50 000, I thought the best thing to do was focus on one theme (I had less than $100). Although, I would loved to have obtain some of the wonderful fossils I instead bought from several different vendors, some uncut mineral specimens. The balance of these being minerals with a metamorphic theme such as Kyanite, Staurolite, Forsterite and Almandine Garnet plus some others. I will do a future blog post on Kyanite and how it and other minerals can be used to estimate the temperature and pressure of metamorphism.

I know that if I get the chance I will go next year and get some more metamorphic minerals and maybe if I save enough look at other rock forming and ore minerals and of course, fossils. Anyone that is as boring as me will be delighted... as will others who like prettier things!