The Fossickers Way, from Nundle in the south to Warialda in the north and then east to Inverell and Glen Innes, snakes its way along the western slopes of the New England plateau and passes through some of the world’s richest gem areas. In these parts, if you look hard enough, you could find your fortune in sapphires, zircon, jasper, prase, rhodonite, crystals and even gold. It is a drive through quintessential country NSW, through open wheat and grazing lands and deeply wooded slopes, though prosperous country towns steeped in gold rush history. The entire trip is around 375 km and can easily be done in two or three days, more if you intend to do some fossicking along the way.
The small town of Nundle, in the Peel Valley at the foot of the Great Dividing Range has had something of a resurgence in the past few years. Originally a gold rush town, it retains much of its heritage in the buildings of the main street, many of which have now been transformed into galleries, shops and a guesthouse. Thankfully it has managed to avoid becoming a victim of the tourism makeover – this town stills feels like the country village it is.
The most impressive building as you come into town is the Peel Inn, a two-storey pub built in the 1860s. Local legend has it that the family of the current owners, the Schofields, won the hotel in a card game not long after it opened its doors. The second story is built entirely of Wunderlich tin, and the decorative pressed metal lines the six-foot-wide verandah as well as many of the attic-style rooms. Inside is a beautiful cedar staircase and there are extensive gardens (including a shady courtyard leading off the restaurant) out the back.
Practically next door is the Jenkins Street Guesthouse, formally the town’s bank which has been elegantly restored and now offers luxurious accommodation and one of the best country restaurants (Cha!Cha!Cha!) west of Sydney.
For such a small town, the shopping here is great, with second-hand book shops, antique stores, hand-made country furniture, a gourmet tea shop and the newly opened Nundle Woollen Mill. Set up primarily as a tourist attraction, it’s also a good example of how tourism has brought more jobs to the once declining village as well as an educational facility for the local TAFE, schools and university. It has a large retail showroom as well as a working wool processing facility out the back where you can watch the local wool transformed from fleece to yarn.
But it is the gold rush history and the spectacular mountain scenery that is the star attraction in Nundle. There are several fossicking sites around the town, mainly on the flats of the Peel River, which twists its way through the valley from Nundle to Tamworth. Gold panning is popular at Bowling Alley Point, the nearby village of Woolomin and at Chaffey Dam. You can see remnants of the early mining days in the hills and there are still some working gold mines in the mountains above the town, towards Hanging Rock.
For a taste of what the mines once were visit Mount Misery Underground Gold Mine and Gold Museum across the road from the pub. Formally a coffin factory, the museum is packed with mining and gold rush memorabilia and features a 120-metre underground mine tunnel.
Hanging Rock, 11 km from town and 1100 metres above sea level offers some stunning views of the district. It gets cold here in winter, with snowfalls not uncommon. You can camp (summer is best) at Sheba Dams, built by miners in 1888, and in the state forests further along the road.
From Nundle, follow the Peel River to Tamworth, the unashamed Country Music Capital of Australia. It’s hard to escape country music in this town – there’s a giant golden guitar, guitar-shaped swimming pools, halls and walks of country music fame, memorials and museums dedicated to the music and its makers and of course, the annual Country Music Festival in January.
If the Tamworth twang all gets a bit much, the Tamworth City Gallery is worth a look, as are the new Regional Botanic Gardens.
Tamworth’s other, less well known claim to fame is that it was the first municipality in Australia to install street lights – 28 years before Sydney. You can find out all about it at the Powerstation Museum.
The Fossickers Way heads north from Tamworth, and a 25 minute drive brings you to Manilla. Take a wander down the main street, which is lined with grand, Federation-style buildings and beautiful wrought iron verandahs shading most of the hotels and shop fronts. This is classic sheep and beef country and a centre for paragliding and hang-gliding. The national championships are held here each year. Fishing and bird watching are also popular at nearby Lake Keepit and Split Rock Dam.
Manilla is also home to one of only three operating meaderies in the country. Dutton’s Meadery makes the oldest alcoholic drink known – mead. Tasting a little like a fortified sherry, the manufacturing of mead from honey dates back to 1200BC.
From Manilla, it is 35 km to Barraba, roughly the half way point along the Fossickers Way. Situated on a geological fault line, known as the Peel Fault, the surrounding area is rich in fossicking sites. Once a rich gold, copper and asbestos mining centre, there is still a diatomite mine (used in the making of kitty litter, among other things) on the northern outskirts of town. Try your luck fossicking around Ironbark Creek, about 18 km to the east of town. Look for gold, pyrites, malachite, jasper and red, brown and yellow quartz.
If you’re not having much luck striking it rich on your own, visit the Three Creeks Gold Mine at Bingara, 56km on from Barraba. Here you can learn the correct techniques to pan for gold and sieve for gemstones, take a metal detecting class and check out the display of nuggets and old artefacts. There are also gold detecting tours available in Bingara, ask at the Information Centre for details.
The next of the classic towns you’ll pass through is Warialda, set in the midst of red soil grazing plains. This is rich farming country, with a number of fine Victorian buildings in the small town centre. Depending on who you ask, in the Weraerai language Warialda either means ‘Place of Wild Honey’ or ‘Home of Cranky Rock’. A popular local picnic site, Cranky Rock is a jumble of granite boulders, balancing on the edge of a creek. Local legend has it that a ‘cranky’ Chinaman working in the area in 1875 jumped to his death from the highest balancing rock, after being falsely accused of some wrong doing – what the dastardly deed was no one seems to be able to recall.
Fossicking around here is good at Tiger’s Gap, 5 km east of town on the Gwydir Highway. Look for opalized and petrified wood. There are also several old gravel quarries near town where you could find jasper quartz, agate and ionised woods. You can pick up mud maps of the sites from the tourist office next door to the library.
From Warialda, the Fossickers Way turns east onto the Gwydir Highway to Inverell and Glen Innes.
Beside the Macintyre River, the regional centre of Inverell has many fine, well-restored Victorian buildings.
It is also the main centre for sapphires in the state. 70 per cent of the world's sapphires come from Australia, and almost 70 per cent of those come from the Inverell area. There is a mining museum at the tourist information centre, which has a large collection of gems and minerals and has a working model of a sapphire mine. You can also hire fossicking equipment here. There is a fossicking area at the Pioneer Village, complete with wash tanks for those who don’t like to bend their backs. The DeJon Sapphire Centre also has easy-style fossicking which you can buy by the bucket and then wash it in the tanks provided. For more information on fossicking in the Inverell area see our story on Sapphire Sleuthing.
Inverell is also becoming an olive producing area. Thirteen local farmers have banded together to form Gwydir Olives, which produces a range of oils, marinated olives and olive oil soaps. You can tour the processing plant in Inverell or visit one of the groves at Olives of Beaulieu, on the Copeton Dam Road, 10km from Inverell on the Warialda side. You can taste the fruit and oils and there is a café serving morning and afternoon teas.
The last major stop on the Fossickers Way is Glen Innes. If Inverell likes to call itself the Sapphire City, Glen Innes dubs itself as the heart of ‘Celtic Country’. The first settlers to the district were predominantly Scots and it has traded on its Celtic connections ever since. On the first weekend in May, the annual Australian Celtic Festival is held at the Australian Standing Stones on the outskirts of town.
These standing stones, the only ones erected outside the British Isles in the past 3000 years, were erected in 1992 as a National Monument to the Celts. According to the information board at the site, the main feature is a circle of 24 stones, representing the 24 hours of the day. Outside the circle, four ‘cardinal’ stones mark true north, east, south and west. These four stones, with a single stone just inside the circle, form the Southern Cross, symbolising the link between the old and new worlds. Another formation represents the Ionic cross, symbol of the early Christian Church and still used on Roman Catholic churches today. Other stones mark the summer and winter solstices, the longest and shortest days of the year.
For a different taste of the region’s heritage, visit the Land of the Beardies Museum, one of the biggest folk museums in the State. The term ‘Beardies’ stems from two locals, Chandler and Duval, both of whom wore long flowing beards who were good bushmen working on cattle and sheep stations north of Armidale in the early 1800s. With a sound knowledge of the area they guided landseekers to available land. It became common for newcomers to be told "Ask the Beardies" when looking for land to settle upon. There is an area, ‘Beardies Plains’, named in their honour and the stream that traversed the valley became "Beardy Waters".
Fossicking finds around Glen Innes are just as rich in sapphires as Inverell. You can join one of a number of local fossicking tours (ask for details at the Information Centre) or try your luck at Wellingrove Fossicking Reserve, 20 km north west of town on the Bonshaw and Wellingrove roads. There is an entry fee of $5, but they say that the sapphires and zircons are there for the picking, or sieving, as the case may be. There are also good fossicking sites at Boolbinda, Pintops, Kingsgate, and Dwyers. The nearby towns of Emmaville and Torrington (especially Torrington State Recreation Area) also have good fossicking areas.
After almost 400 km of country back roads and dozens of secret and not-so-secret fossicking sites and reserves spread out along the Fossickers Way, you may not have struck it rich. However, at least you’ve had a chance to explore a part of the Australian countryside that is just as rich in history and country hospitality as it is rich in minerals under the ground.
The newly-gazetted, fairly undiscovered Kwiambal National Park, 90 km north of Inverell, is one of the most pristine and enjoyable parks in the State. On the junction of the Macintyre and Severn rivers, the large, shady campsite, situated next to the Severn River, has some great fishing and swimming holes. There is also more fantastic swimming at the Junction (8 km easy walk from the campground) and at Macintyre Falls (lots of steps but worth it). It’s a great place to take the kids for a few days, or explore on your own – but go now, before everyone else hears about it!
If you have a yearning for yabbies but don’t seem to have much luck trying to catch them in the dams and creeks of the area, then visit the Nundle Yabby Farm. You can catch them in season (at least you know they are there!), or else buy them most times of the year. It's best to order 2-3 days ahead if possible, though, so they can be purged. There are also tours of the shed and you can see yabbies on display. The farm has an eating area, built much like an old wool shed, and large groups can arrange a country lunch, with good old-fashioned stews and damper and a pig on a spit. It’s on Happy Valley Rd (Hanging Rock Rd). Phone: (02) 6769 3363, and open daily, 10am - 4pm; longer hours in summer.
You don't need a licence for fossicking, but there are certain rules to follow. Never excavate to a depth of more than one metre, never use explosives and never damage or remove bush rocks.
A page of fossickers' guidelines is available from the tourist centre in most fossicking areas. It may also be worth contacting the NSW Department of Mineral Resources for fact sheets and up-to-date publications.
Local jewellers will offer advice on the purchase of local stones, cut or uncut. They'll also be more than happy to value your rock when you strike it lucky.
Gone fossicking tells you everything else you want to know.
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