Road trips have always been part of our family life. Sometimes planned, sometimes entirely spontaneous.
Every now and then Ella and I will throw a couple of bags in the car, pick a direction and see where the road takes us. One “show holiday” weekend years ago we somehow ended up in Cooladdi. This long weekend though, we knew exactly where we wanted to go — Queensland’s gemfields region of Sapphire and Rubyvale.
It had been sitting quietly on our “one day” list for years.
So at 5am Friday morning we left the Sunshine Coast and pointed ourselves north-west.
Like most good road trips, the journey itself became part of the story. Somewhere along the way Ella spotted cows standing in thick morning mist beside a creek, so naturally we pulled over with cameras in hand and spent half an hour being loudly bellowed at by unimpressed cattle while kind locals slowed down to make sure the two women wandering around on the roadside were still alive and well.
Before long we found ourselves in Monto for lunch, laptop charging and a wander through the wonderfully eclectic local art museum. Ella somehow manages to balance university, photography work and life simultaneously with baffling ease, so even remote country towns occasionally become temporary offices between coffees.
By the time we finally rolled into Rubyvale it was well after sunset and thirteen hours had passed since we first watched dawn break over the highway.
The local pub was alive with Friday night energy — live harmonica blues, rock music, dusty boots and the kind of conversations that only happen in small country towns after dark. Rubyvale itself feels delightfully unexpected. There’s the pub, the IGA, the café, a scattering of houses… and then what feels like endless gemstone and jewellery shops sitting amongst the mines and machinery of the surrounding hills.
At one of those mines live our hosts, Jane and Michael, who welcomed us into their cabin for the weekend — a cabin that also apparently came with a resident wallaby and joey who rarely wandered more than a few metres from our front door.
If you’ve followed our road trips over the years, you may remember Ella spent part of her senior homeschooling years volunteering Saturday nights at the Kingaroy Observatory. As it turns out, Michael is not only a gemstone miner, but also a dedicated night sky observer with his own small observatory nearby.
So for one weekend we found ourselves standing between two worlds: sapphires and zircon beneath the ground, wildlife moving quietly across it, and stars stretched endlessly above it.
Thirty-six hours in Rubyvale. Thirty-five hours driving there and back.
Entirely worth it.
“(More photographs from this adventure are being shared progressively on our Instagram & Facebook stories and posts this week. j )”
To Hold & To Have 