Malachite
WARRNAMBOOL GEM CLUB
Close up view of Canadian Ammonite shell
2021 CLUB ACTIVITIES
28/2/21: FIELD TRIP Our club was invited to join the Horsham Gem Club for a field trip starting near Coleraine at the ‘Giant Rock Reserve’ and then travelling to a farm and two quarries. The field officer from Horsham, Bill Gardner, also organised a trip last year which several of our members attended. Photos below. Top row: L: walking towards Giant Rock reserve. R: climbing up the approach to the volcanic plug. Second row: view from top of plug.
Below: lunchtime in Coleraine, nice locality and we had a good time catching up with Horsham members. It was great to see a good turn up of members from both clubs.
JANUARY  FEBRUARY  MARCH  APRIL  MAY JUNE  JULY  AUGUST  SEPTEMBER  OCTOBER  NOVEMBER  DECEMBER 2022 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC 2023 J F M A M J J A S O N D 2024 J F M A M J J A S O N D
18/5/21 Alan and Helen travelled to Hamilton to run a ‘show & tell’ for a Primary School, grade 4 class studying geology. The students were enthusiastic and asked many questions with the ‘1 hour’ session ending up after 2 hours. 19/5/21 Several club members travelled to ‘Crystal Universe’ in Port Melbourne. They reported that they had a great time and made many purchases of ‘rough’ for their lapidary work. 22/6/21 The two photos below are of a broach made by club member Helen. The central stone is Ametrine, surrounded by Spinels and Sapphires. All hand made in Palladium Silver.
2022 CLUB ACTIVITIES Warrnambool Lapidary Club Excursion 6 Feb 2022 Chasing up on a vague report of “a band of brown phosphatic nodules in the Clifton formation”, an expedition was mounted to Clifton Beach near Port Cambell. (photo left) The weather was superb, sunshine, little wind, and not too hot, which was good considering the climb down to the beach. After trekking along the beach, we fossicked for several hours in debris which had fallen from the cliff. The only thing that looked vaguely like the elusive nodules were small brownish-yellow nodules, however sectioning these later showed them to be mainly ironstone peppered with limestone, (photo below left) Some other white nodules from the other end of the beach showed a bit more promise polishing up to a light yellow. (photo below)
April 2022
18/6/22 Club members conducted a ‘Bunnnings BBQ’ as a fund raiser for our club. Thanks to all those members who attended and helped with this effort. Such days help with keeping the club in a sound financal position.
18/6/22 Club members conducted a ‘Bunnnings BBQ’ as a fund raiser for our club. Thanks to all those members who attended and helped with this effort. Such days help with keeping the club in a sound financal position.
Detecting excursion to Moyston by Warrnambool and Horsham Lapidary Clubs On Sunday 4 th of September, 2022, some 18 people gathered at Moyston for a detecting excursion. Periodically overcast, but no rain which made a change. Several people stayed overnight in the Recreation Reserve, the remainder travelling so as to arrive at 10 am for a coffee at the local café. We then scattered in various directions and met again for lunch at 1 pm at the Rec Reserve in a shed where we could warm up around a 44-gallon drum fire-place. We again went off this time in a group to the southern end of the gold field for some more detecting finishing with afternoon tea at 3, departing about 4. While no gold was found (as usual) there was the typical assortment of stuff which makes this an interesting pastime. All in all, a very good social outing and a chance to catch with people we hadn’t seen for a while.
2023 Club activities: This year started off with our club’s Gem Show, which was held in O.L.H.C. Primary School Hall, 2 Selby Rd, east Warrnambool. See club shows _ for further details. May: Two of our club members were able to attend the Fyansford Quarry fossicking trip on Sunday, 30/4/23. The email I received after their trip says it all. “Lyn and I had an absolute ball at Batesford Quarry on Sunday. We were the last to leave, we were busy scratching about in the sand and gravel having so much fun. We both found some sharks teeth and loads and loads of sea urchin spines. I even found a fossilised crab claw too. The Geelong club said they'd be doing another field trip there around Sept/Oct. Lyn and I will be going again. I hope a few more Warrnie members take up their offer to join them. They're a friendly bunch.” Maureen See the photos below: clockwise from top left: Quarry view, some finds, Sharks teeth, Lyn. Thanks goes to the Geelong club for organising the outing
Some of our members also attended the Horsham Gem Show on the 6 th & 7 th of May, which was quite impressive and had a good crowd through while we were there. The club always has a great display of high quality display cases for visitors to see and they cater well for the children going through the show. A pleasant day out for our members. Several of our club members spent significant time undertaking maintenance on club machinery during May, replacing worn bearings plus some pulleys and pulley belts and a diamond wheel. It resulted in some quieter grinding units and stopped the sanding belts slipping off the expanding drums. Thanks to Steve H., Owen H. and Alan A. for their efforts. The number of members using the club rooms has been pleasing of late. Members are cutting cabochons and some have tried their hand at carving. Hopefully we will have some good display cases at our next show. Steve H. is faceting some nice gems. This lemon quartz and an oval CZ are recent examples.
Alan M. has been learning to facet under the tutorage of Steve H. and John H. He has faceted several nice gems to date.The photo below left is an eight sided brilliant topaz. The pendant and cabachon shown below are ‘crazy lace agate’ and have been cut by Michael T. at the club.
Club members Dianne, Situm and Allan faceting gemstones at our club rooms September 2023
December The club conducted a Bunnings BBQ in Warrnambool on Sunday the 10th.. A big thanks goes to those members who manned the Bunnings BBQ on Sunday. Several members were there for much of the day. That included Helen, Lynn, Martin and Alan. Several other members also spent significant time, including Bud, Sithum, Therese, Allan, Maureen, Kyle, and Michael. A special thanks to Kay for all the preparation work she did so the BBQ ran smoothly. The weather turned out to be better than we expected and we were busy from around 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. and then had a another good run from around 3 p.m. We spent some $535 on (mainly) bread, drinks and meat.We took around $1487 in cash and $502 via eftpos for a total of $1989. Our best BBQ result to date. That gave us a profit of approximately $1454. An ex club member generously (anonymously) paid for the cost of the meat ($280) so we ended up with $1734 at the end. A great result for our club. Our club has received a grant of $4596 from the Warrnambool City Council to enable the purchase of the two new sanding/polishing units including Nova flexible diamond wheels. These are to be used by members who have difficulty standing up for long periods while cabbing. They will be able to sit at these new units while cabbing and so continue with the hobby they love. Our club is very grateful for the ongoing support of the Warrnambool City Council! Such support helps small clubs to continue to provide facilities for the local community.
2024 April: The club has installed the two new cabbing machines in our club rooms. The photos below show the new machines plus club member Maureen using one of the units for the first time. Members impressed with the units to date!
Elbaite crystals
WARRNAMBOOL GEM CLUB
Close up view of Canadian Ammonite shell
28/2/21: FIELD TRIP Our club was invited to join the Horsham Gem Club for a field trip starting near Coleraine at the ‘Giant Rock Reserve’ and then travelling to a farm and two quarries. The field officer from Horsham, Bill Gardner, also organised a trip last year which several of our members attended. Photos below. Top row: L: walking towards Giant Rock reserve. R: climbing up the approach to the volcanic plug. Second row: view from top of plug.
2021 CLUB ACTIVITIES
Below: lunchtime in Coleraine, nice locality and we had a good time catching up with Horsham members. It was great to see a good turn up of members from both clubs.
JANUARY  FEBRUARY  MARCH  APRIL  MAY JUNE  JULY  AUGUST  SEPTEMBER  OCTOBER  NOVEMBER  DECEMBER 2022 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC 2023 J F M A M J J A S O N D 2024 J F M A M J J A S O N D
18/5/21 Alan and Helen travelled to Hamilton to run a ‘show & tell’ for a Primary School, grade 4 class studying geology. The students were enthusiastic and asked many questions with the ‘1 hour’ session ending up after 2 hours. 19/5/21 Several club members travelled to ‘Crystal Universe’ in Port Melbourne. They reported that they had a great time and made many purchases of ‘rough’ for their lapidary work. 22/6/21 The two photos below are of a broach made by club member Helen. The central stone is Ametrine, surrounded by Spinels and Sapphires. All hand made in Palladium Silver.
2022 CLUB ACTIVITIES Warrnambool Lapidary Club Excursion 6 Feb 2022 Chasing up on a vague report of “a band of brown phosphatic nodules in the Clifton formation”, an expedition was mounted to Clifton Beach near Port Cambell. (photo left) The weather was superb, sunshine, little wind, and not too hot, which was good considering the climb down to the beach. After trekking along the beach, we fossicked for several hours in debris which had fallen from the cliff. The only thing that looked vaguely like the elusive nodules were small brownish-yellow nodules, however sectioning these later showed them to be mainly ironstone peppered with limestone, (photo below left) Some other white nodules from the other end of the beach showed a bit more promise polishing up to a light yellow. (photo below)
April 2022
18/6/22 Club members conducted a ‘Bunnnings BBQ’ as a fund raiser for our club. Thanks to all those members who attended and helped with this effort. Such days help with keeping the club in a sound financal position.
Detecting excursion to Moyston by Warrnambool and Horsham Lapidary Clubs On Sunday 4 th of September, 2022, some 18 people gathered at Moyston for a detecting excursion. Periodically overcast, but no rain which made a change. Several people stayed overnight in the Recreation Reserve, the remainder travelling so as to arrive at 10 am for a coffee at the local café. We then scattered in various directions and met again for lunch at 1 pm at the Rec Reserve in a shed where we could warm up around a 44-gallon drum fire-place. We again went off this time in a group to the southern end of the gold field for some more detecting finishing with afternoon tea at 3, departing about 4. While no gold was found (as usual) there was the typical assortment of stuff which makes this an interesting pastime. All in all, a very good social outing and a chance to catch with people we hadn’t seen for a while.
2023 Club activities: This year started off with our club’s Gem Show, which was held in O.L.H.C. Primary School Hall, 2 Selby Rd, east Warrnambool. See club shows _ for further details. May: Two of our club members were able to attend the Fyansford Quarry fossicking trip on Sunday, 30/4/23. The email I received after their trip says it all. “Lyn and I had an absolute ball at Batesford Quarry on Sunday. We were the last to leave, we were busy scratching about in the sand and gravel having so much fun. We both found some sharks teeth and loads and loads of sea urchin spines. I even found a fossilised crab claw too. The Geelong club said they'd be doing another field trip there around Sept/Oct. Lyn and I will be going again. I hope a few more Warrnie members take up their offer to join them. They're a friendly bunch.” Maureen See the photos below: clockwise from top left: Quarry view, some finds, Sharks teeth, Lyn. Thanks goes to the Geelong club for organising the outing
Some of our members also attended the Horsham Gem Show on the 6 th & 7 th of May, which was quite impressive and had a good crowd through while we were there. The club always has a great display of high quality display cases for visitors to see and they cater well for the children going through the show. A pleasant day out for our members. Several of our club members spent significant time undertaking maintenance on club machinery during May, replacing worn bearings plus some pulleys and pulley belts and a diamond wheel. It resulted in some quieter grinding units and stopped the sanding belts slipping off the expanding drums. Thanks to Steve H., Owen H. and Alan A. for their efforts. The number of members using the club rooms has been pleasing of late. Members are cutting cabochons and some have tried their hand at carving. Hopefully we will have some good display cases at our next show. Steve H. is faceting some nice gems. This lemon quartz and an oval CZ are recent examples.
Alan M. has been learning to facet under the tutorage of Steve H. and John H. He has faceted several nice gems to date.The photo below left is an eight sided brilliant topaz. The pendant and cabachon shown below are ‘crazy lace agate’ and have been cut by Michael T. at the club.
Club members Dianne, Situm and Allan faceting gemstones at our club rooms September 2023
December The club conducted a Bunnings BBQ in Warrnambool on Sunday the 10th.. A big thanks goes to those members who manned the Bunnings BBQ on Sunday. Several members were there for much of the day. That included Helen, Lynn, Martin and Alan. Several other members also spent significant time, including Bud, Sithum, Therese, Allan, Maureen, Kyle, and Michael. A special thanks to Kay for all the preparation work she did so the BBQ ran smoothly. The weather turned out to be better than we expected and we were busy from around 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. and then had a another good run from around 3 p.m. We spent some $535 on (mainly) bread, drinks and meat.We took around $1487 in cash and $502 via eftpos for a total of $1989. Our best BBQ result to date. That gave us a profit of approximately $1454. An ex club member generously (anonymously) paid for the cost of the meat ($280) so we ended up with $1734 at the end. A great result for our club. Our club has received a grant of $4596 from the Warrnambool City Council to enable the purchase of the two new sanding/polishing units including Nova flexible diamond wheels. These are to be used by members who have difficulty standing up for long periods while cabbing. They will be able to sit at these new units while cabbing and so continue with the hobby they love. Our club is very grateful for the ongoing support of the Warrnambool City Council! Such support helps small clubs to continue to provide facilities for the local community.
2024 April: The club has installed the two new cabbing machines in our club rooms. The photos below show the new machines plus club member Maureen using one of the units for the first time. Members impressed with the units to date!
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