Post #277989 by Paipo on Wed, Jan 10, 2007 12:18 PM

Thanks Tama, Benz, gap and llt...I don't get this stuff from the beach as it comes from South Australia, but I did do a prospecting trip out to the town where this stone comes from a few summers ago. I grew up in South Australia and get back every few years to visit the family.
They mine so much jade there that it's dumped in piles all over the place - they were using it as structural hardfill in the harbour! Each day I would go out and fill my backpack with rocks and go back to the caravan park and sort through it at night (whilst working my way through a bottle of rum with my cousins!) I manged to get about 25kg of rock through on my flight home without paying any excess (something that I always seem to manage when travelling overseas).
The whole thing seemed like a fevered dream - crazy high temperatures and humidity, a strange little town in the middle of nowhere, and jade as far as the eye could see, free for the taking. The video I shot is guaranteed to make any carver's jaw drop! I'm pretty keen to get back there - maybe next summer as I have a another trip to OZ scheduled for then.

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[ Edited by: Paipo 2007-01-10 12:56 ]