EMERALD

After leaving Yeppon we travelled to Emerald. You would expect that the town was named after the gem stone, but in fact it was called Emerald because of the rich fertile soil for growing crops. The surrounding towns of Sapphire and Rubyvale are situated on the largest sapphire gem fields in the world. We took a drive out to these towns to check out the gems. We saw some beautiful and expensive stones and I discovered that rubies are really red saphhires!



A few kilometres from the town is Fairbairn Dam which provides the water for crops such as cotton, citrus orchards and vineyards as well as coal mining. It also a great spot for fishing and water sports for tourists and locals alike.






It also has the largest painting on an easel in the world. It is a painting of Van Gogh's Sunflowers which was once their main crop as well as a lovely old railway station.














While we have been driving from Roma to Yeppoon and then back out to Emerald we have seen numerous coal trains with as many as one hundred carriages taking coal to the ports for export. There is also a lot of road works going on as well as a pipeline which we guess is to carry gas into Rockhampton.