Digging For The Soul

19/01/2025

Stoked to finally say that after almost 12 months we're finally getting back out bush on the hunt for pretty rocks and creating some content for our YouTube channel! If you like rocks, check it out and if you could share it around a bit to jog YouTubes memory of our existence, we'd really appreciate it! Cheers folks! 🙂🤙

Hey Folks! We're back out bush in the summer sun and boy it feels goooood! This episode we have a little chat about what's been happening these last 12 month...

21/01/2024

Beautiful Smoky Quartz Crystals For Sale!

Up for sale, we have this bundle of 8 Smoky Quartz Crystals including 2 Enhydro. Bundle price of $200 for all 8 or $50 per crystal. Price reduced from $80 per crystal 😀

12/12/2023

Hey folks! 😁 we've been looking forward to this one for a while now, it's taken a lot of practice and patience but we have finally created some pendants made from Mooralla smoky quartz crystals, wrapped in shiny fine silver and we're so happy with the results!

We have spent the last few months honing our jewellery making skills and crafting our own minimalist style that compliments the stones and brings them to life. We want to create pieces of jewellery that are strong and wearable but subtle and to never go overboard or interrupt the crystals natural beauty and we feel like we have found what we are looking for, we hope you all do to!

These pendants are all for sale and priced at $110 with a 50cm Sterling Silver necklace with all Sterling Silver fixings, or for $90 with a 50cm leather necklace, also fitted with Sterling Silver fixings. Custom length necklaces can be arranged for an extra $5. To purchase or for any enquiries, contact us via our page and we can go from there!

Thanks to all you beautiful people for supporting us on our journey so far, your ongoing support and love has helped us to follow our passion and take this next step into our life of shiny rocks and doing what we love!

Peace! 😊✌️

Jim & Tay

30/11/2023

More of the big open cut reef mine we explored in the last video and Tay found this huge vugh inside the massive column of quartz left behind by the old miners! it looks like a few other keen crystal hunters have had a go at chipping away some of the easier stones, if only there was a way to remove the whole cavity without the infinite tonnage of quartz collapsing on top of us....

The reef mines in central Victoria can be a hit and funny place sometimes. Seemingly featureless quartz can hide these cavities, AKA vughs in all sorts of places. Tay and I cant quite figure out what geological processes would cause these cavities to form in this sort of rock yet but if you have any ideas, feel free to jump in the comments and share your ideas! We wonder how, when the liquid that is injected into these cavities under immense pressure, the cavities could form? wouldn't the effects of gravity allow any air pockets to rise and for the liquid to fall, preventing the pockets of air from staying at the bottom of the mass? A bit like bubbles rising up in a glass of soft drink? or are these cavities like the bubbles that stick to the side of the glass? I may have answered our question...

Anyhow! We hope you enjoy the video! Always remember to check out even the well known spots when you're out crystal hunting as you never know what you might find! This was a well known reef mine with a historic walking trail and a picnic area, we were amazed to still find crystals here!

Peace!

Jim & Tay

24/11/2023

This was our first little crystal hunting outing after a couple of weeks preoccupied with another little passion project we've been working on and it felt so good to be back out exploring! albeit, for just a couple of hours...

This Behemoth of an old open cut reef mine is one that we first visited when we started exploring the old reef mines here in central Victoria, before we really knew what we were looking for, though! This time we went a little further and found it opened up into a much larger cavity and there was quartz everywhere! The old gold miners had left a lot of what must have been low-grade quartz behind and we found plenty of clear quartz crystal lying around in the rubble. Tay even found a big vugh (cavity) that was lined with crystals and crystal faces! Check it out in our next release coming out soon 👍

Peace!

Jim & Tay

04/11/2023

Thank you to everyone who has supported us on our journey 💕 We haven't posted on this page lately but we have still been active on our Youtube Channel! Pleased to say that one of our videos has had 10,000 views! So crazy to think that so many people have watched our videos so thank you all again for the support, it means alot 🙏

26/09/2023

This cheeky little beauty was on the side of a fairly baron hill, mostly devoid of quartz. The lack of quartz did seem to make it easy to spot this little breadcrumb trail, though! It lead straight up the hill to the base of a tree which had fractured the sandstone bedrock and forced this little pocket to the surface. Finding crystals like this on new ground hasn't been easy for us but as we get better at paying more attention to the ground and what's around us, we're starting to notice more and more and the "gut feelings" are getting a little less misguided.

Learning to find seemingly random tiny objects on the vastness of the earth can be a daunting task at times but like anything, skill comes with practice and practice leads to experience. Every hour out the bush spent prospecting is an hour of practice and an hour of lived experience! Even the "nothing" day you might have (days in our case!), driving for hours and walking for miles isn't nothing at all. Its a day spent out amongst nature, letting curiosity guide you, looking, digging, noticing things, picking up rocks and scratching your head, then taking all of that home to decipher it and stew into new ideas and experiments to test on your next outing. The lightbulb moments are endless and each one leads to better intuition.

This is why we love the constant challenge that finding crystals brings and all the real, lived experience that comes with it! We found this hill near a town we'd never visited before, down a rough track into countryside that was new to us and full of history, on a walk to check out some old shafts we could see in the distance. Its a Beautiful little town and area with some interesting characters, striking and unique bushland that's full of history and geology, hidden riverside havens and a whole lot more and if not for shiny little rocks like this one, we may never have even known the place existed!

Its always worth getting out there, even if its just for the arvo!

Peace!

Jim & Tay

22/09/2023

This is what we've been trying to find for a very long time! An adit into the underground workings of an ancient riverbed! Formed between 55 and 65ish million years ago, these cemented gravels are the remains of a prehistoric landscape where water was far more abundant than it is today. In places, these rivers were 100s of meters wide and with their alluvium being made up of the richly auriferous quartz reefs of the victorian goldfields, they often contained massive amounts of gold!

The old timers used a number of techniques to work the gravels of these ancient riverbeds depending on where and how they were situated in the landscape. The gravels over millions of years have become a cemented conglomerate that would rival building concrete for hardness so they only dug as much as they needed to in order to access the rich riverbed at its base upon the bedrock. In this instance, the riverbed was accessible and outcropping at the base of the hill so all the old miners had to do was tunnel straight underneath the thick cap of concrete and chase the good stuff, removing as little unnecessary rock as possible!

I was so stoked to stumble upon this spot after a day out with one of our 3 dogs, Lucy. Although being by myself, no outside knowledge of our whereabouts and with the precious matriarch of our kelpie trio sitting patiently in the car, this was not a good time to be exploring potentially dangerous mine shafts! We're going back soon to have a proper look and do some gold detecting, keep an eye out on the channel for the video!

Peace!

Jim & Tay

09/09/2023

Just a peak from our recent Inglewood/Rheola trip! We found this little wonder in a creek bed beside some old workings. The miners back in the 1800s were chasing a gold lead in the form of an ancient riverbed that flowed through the area around 60 million years ago. These ancient riverbeds were a rich source of alluvial gold and in this area in particular, crystals and precious gemstones! All kinds of stones were recorded in finds from the old gold workings in this area including quartz crystals of many colours like amethyst, citrine and smoky as well as topaz, tourmaline, garnet and sapphire, just to name a few!

Much of the crystals in these alluvial workings are very water worn and look so soft from being tumbled in the riverbed all those years ago. We have found so far that crystals in these leads can be plentiful, albeit a little harder to find as the soft faces don't reflect light as well and the are harder to define from the surrounding gravels.

We hope you like the short! If you'd like to see the full version, check it out here https://youtu.be/hxcIIbhjPkY

Peace!

Jim & Tay

09/09/2023

Behind the Scenes at Digging For The Soul!
New video out Today 💕