Mum's 'amazing' $3000 find in Aussie outback
Amber Betteridge and partner Matt own their own mining business but were off-duty when they made the rather lucrative discovery.
A "fun" weekend activity proved rather fruitful for one Aussie mum after finding a 54-carat sapphire while specking in the outback with her nine-month old baby in her arms.
Amber Betteridge was with her husband and two young children when she spotted something blue on the outback floor in Rubyvale in Central Queensland and decided to take a closer look.
"We thought it was going to be quite a little one, just a little bit showing on the surface, but then when I was digging it, it just got bigger and bigger," she told Yahoo News.
After freeing it from the dirt and shining the light from her phone onto the gem, the illuminating colours confirmed it was indeed a sapphire — which also had a "unique characteristic".
"It's what they call a Pharaoh's eye... that's the yellowish shape you can see within the blue colour so it's a parti sapphire," she said.
Leisurely weekend find worth up to $3,000
The sapphire will need to be faceted but could fetch up to $3,000 depending on how it is cut, Amber said.
"In its rough form, I would say it's probably worth around the $500 to $1,000 mark," she said. "They can be worth between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the cut, shape and size."
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Despite technically being off-duty when she found the sapphire Amber and her husband have been professional hand miners since 2021— turning their hobby into a business and moving from the coast to the centre of the state.
"It turned out to be an amazing gem," she said.
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