Grafton Gem and Lapidary Club in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia | Non-profit organisation

Grafton Gem and Lapidary Club

Locality: Grafton, New South Wales, Australia

Phone: +61 435 583 021

Address: Showgrounds, Prince st 2460 Grafton, NSW, Australia

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25.01.2022 Hi everyone. Hope you are all enjoying Jacaranda time. As I said last time, the Gem Club will be open from Sat Oct 28th to Friday Nov 3rd 9am to 5pm and on Jacaranda Sat Nov 3 from 9am until the procession starts about 4pm. If you are standing near the Showgrounds to see the procession, why don't you pop in and see our display while you are waiting. Entry is $2 for adults and children are free. There is lots to look at and we have a raffle of 3 lovely handmade pieces of jewel...lery. The Club has a 12inch Slab Saw for sale by tender. Tenders in writing to be handed in at the club by Sat Dec 2nd during opening times. The Gem Club is situated in the Grafton Showgrounds but it is for everyone. We have members from all parts of the Clarence valley and even further afield. It is amazing what can be made from a very ordinary looking rock when it is polished. Have you ever wondered about diamonds. The word 'diamond' comes originally from Greek and means something like 'invincible'. The meaning refers to both the extraordinary hardness of the mineral as well as , according to ancient myths, its supposed magic properties to protect against poison and attack. It is usually thought of as colourless but can be blue, yellow, red, green, pink, purple, brown and black. Rio Tinto has recently unveiled the largest Red Diamond from the Argyle Mine in WA. It is a 2.11 carat polished, radiant cut diamond and is known as the Argyle Everglow. The Clubrooms are in the Grafton Showground. We are open on Tuesday and Saturday from 9am to 4pm and Thursday from 2pm to 8pm credit Barbara Watkins (this post is a bit late due to not posting properly , so its a little late my apologies - admin)

19.01.2022 Well, another Grafton Show over. We were very pleased with the number of people who came into the clubrooms to see our show entries and our display, thank you very much and we hope you enjoyed our exhibits.. Well done to everyone who entered the show competition, it was great to get so many entries. Congratulations to those who won their categories. Winners of our show raffle were :- 1st - Tina, 2nd- C Ross. 3rd- C Slingsby. We hope you enjoy the prizes. The Club also celebra...ted another milestone. Our eldest member, Olga, turned 90 years old. Congratulations and here's to many more years with us. It was great to see so many members turn up for the luncheon in her honour. As I mentioned earlier, we were getting quotes to line our clubrooms. This has now been done and work will start at the end of the month. We shall certainly be much warmer this winter and cooler next summer. The next activity the club will take part in is the Lismore Gem Fest which will be on the 20th and 21st of May. Some members will have a stall to reduce some of their excess rocks and the things they have made. Other members will go up to Lismore to see what else is available for them to work with. It's always a great fun weekend and is you happen to be in Lismore or decide to go on a days outing there, you will certainly be amazed by the variety of things on sale. Some absolutely fabulous minerals will be on display. Now for some more 'rocky' trivia. The Latin word for stone is "lapis". Also in Latin is the word lapidarius which means 'of or relating to stone'. This is where we get the name of our activities - Lapidary.. This is the name of the act of working rock to make something beautiful and also the name of the person doing the work. It is also part of the name of Lapis Lazuli which just means stone from Lazuli .Lazuli is a corruption of the Persian word lazaward which was originally the name of a place but soon came to mean blue because of the colour of the stone. We also get the English word azure (meaning blue) from the same place. One of the Greek words for stone is "lithos". From this we get the word "lithograph" This is a picture printed from an engraving on stone. It's amazing how words from other languages are changed slightly and become ordinary English words. Well that's all from me this time Barbara Watkins

19.01.2022 The Grafton Gem Club has now reopened. We will be following all the current rules for the safety of the members. So if you have any rock related questions feel free to come in and have a chat. We will do our best to help you but as we are a group of hobbyists we do not have testing equipment and as such we can only offer an opinion. Our opening days are Tuesday, Saturday and Thursday afternoons. See you there. - page admin

18.01.2022 Well, the Lismore Gem Fest went off well. Despite the threat of bad weather, in fact it did not rain on Saturday or Sunday, There were massive crowds on Saturday. Everyone seemed to be having a good time and everyone was loaded down with rocks. The Gem Club has been closed so that the clubrooms could be lined so there isn't any gem club related items to tell.. This work is nearly finished and the clubrooms will re-open on Sat 24th June with the June meeting to follow at 2pm.... It looks really great and we should get the benefit of the insulation in winter and summer. It might interest you to know that most of the States have a gem, mineral or fossil emblem. We are used to seeing the floral and animal emblems but I thought that you'd like to know about the mineral ones. NSW - Black Opal, VIC - Gold, TAS - Crocoite,, SA - Opal, QLD - Sapphire, and WA has a fossil emblem , it is the Gogo fish. That's all for this time. I hope to have more next time. credit: Barbara Watkins See more

16.01.2022 Well, the lining of the clubrooms has now been finished. It looks really good and everything is now back in place. We have also updated the kitchen area. Thanks to Warren for supplying the new cupboards and bench top and also the members who helped to install them. The kitchen and dining area are so much more user friendly. So, if you want to see how everything looks, please come in and see us during our display for the Jacaranda Festival. Once again some of our members ha...ve been travelling..Places visited have included Yowah and area for, opals, Queensland gem fields (Anakie, Sapphire, Rubyvale) where if you are short of time or unable to dig, you can go and purchase a bucket of sapphire wash and is you are lucky you can find some sapphires. ( and yes they did). They also went to the Rock Fair at Kybong near Gympie. It's a fun weekend where buying and selling of rocks happens, plus bonfires and camp oven dinners occur every night for those people camping at the site. For members information, our AGM will be held on Sept 9th at 12pm. followed by the general monthly meeting. Nominations for positions to be received by Aug 26th. We'd like as many members as possible to attend as the efficient running of the club depends on members input. Now for the usual 'rocky' trivia. There are about 5000 known minerals ranging from Allophane to Zykaite including at least 200 caused by human activity. The most common mineral is quartz which is Silica Dioxide. Most of the sand is made of quatz and also many of the semi-precious gemstones such as amethyst, citrine, rose quartz and smoky quartz. It is also used to make glass. Barbara Watkins (post provided to the admin by the writer)

16.01.2022 We have reluctantly said goodbye to our Vice President Peter, because he has moved away. Thank you Peter for all the work you have done for the Gem Club over the years. We would like to say welcome to the new Vice President Derek who has been elected to take his place. Members are looking forward to upcoming Gem Shows and the Grafton Show. The first Gem show is the Glen Innes Minerama next weekend 9,10,11 March. Some of us will be attending and going on field trips arranged ...during the festival. Following that will be the Grafton Gems,Crystals and Fossils Show to he held at the Grafton Showground over the weekend 24 & 25 March. Come in and see the fantastic array of gems,minerals and all things to do with the lapidary craft. There will be ordinary people with stalls and professional dealers with some of the tools and machinery that we use. Then we will be taking part in the Annual Grafton Show on April 20th and 21st. Members are already working on their entries for the Show. As usual, we will be having a great display of our work and collections for you to look at and we will also have a raffle of handmade jewellery. So, do come into the Gem Club Pavilion to see how awesome nature can be. During the very hot days that have just passed, some members went up the mountains to go fossicking, they found some sapphires. We are looking forward to see what they look like when they are faceted. Now for some more rocky information. I expect a lot of you have been watching the Winter Olympics. Did you see any of the Curling. The sport which is a bit like bowls on ice with large lumps of rock. Well, those Curling stones are made of 2 special types of Granite from a small island, called Ailsa Crag. It lies about 16 kms off the south west coast of Scotland. The striking band is made of Ailsa Craig Common Green Granite,. This granite has a higher impact resistance than most other granites, making it bounce better against other stones. The rest of the body is made of Blue Hone Granite which does not absorb water when it it sitting on the ice.This means it is less likely to crack due to water in the stone freezing. The two stones are sealed with an epoxy resin - a type of adhesive that doesn't set which keeps the glue from cracking during extreme temperature changes. So as you can see, rocks are used for all sorts of things that you would not think of. If any one becomes interested in doing things with rocks after seeing what we do and the types of rocks that are available, please come and join us. The club rooms are in the Grafton Showgrounds and we meet on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9am to about 3pm and on Thursdays from 2pm to about 8pm. We are a friendly bunch and we'd love to see you. credit : Barbara Watkins

15.01.2022 While we are having the walls lined, we are taking the opportunity to update the kitchen area a little. This means that the club will not be fully up and running for a little while yet. We will provide updates as to our restart and also to days to come help set things back up - admin

15.01.2022 ( decided to leave it )

14.01.2022 Dear all page members Due to the current crisis , the club is shut until further notice , sorry for the inconvenience, Stay safe everyone and will keep people posted with any and all updates I get Thanks all... Jess Page admin

13.01.2022 The Gem Club AGM was held on 9th Sept. Congratulations to our executive for the coming year. President - Bob, Vice President - Peter, Secretary - Elaine, Acting Treasurer - Kathy, Public Officer - Peter, Show Steward - Elizabeth, Field Officer - Mark, Publicity Officer - Barbara, Librarian - Jessica, Committee - Dale, Brian, Lorraine and Gary.Thanks to everyone who nominated and to all who attended the meeting. Here's to another great year. In acknowledgement of her kind don...ation which enabled us to do the recent renovation of the Clubrooms, June was made an Honorary Life Member. We thank her very much. Thanks also to Leslie who donated a new saw. This enabled us to retire our elderly saw which was made by two founder members of the Club when it first opened in 1965. To go with our renovations, we have new chairs to replace our ancient garage sale and Op shop ones. We also have some new cupboards. Recently the Club was visited by 15 students from years 3/4 from St Andrews School with their teachers. Members were on hand to show them around and talk about the rocks, tell them how we use them to make beautiful things and how the different machines are used to help us turn just rocks into lovely jewellery. We hope that they enjoyed their visit. If any other school would like the opportunity to visit, we would be happy to do the same for them. Please contact us. We are starting to work towards the Jacaranda Festival and the theme for our display entry has been decided. Come in during the Festival to see what it is. The Clubrooms are open for working on Tues and Sat 9am to 3pm. If you wish to contact us please come in while we are open. We also have a Facebook Page - Grafton Gem and Lapidary Club. Barbara Watkins (provided to admin )

13.01.2022 Well, members have now been to two Gem Shows. Several people went up to Glen Innes to go to Minerama. This is an annual show early in March. There were plenty of stalls for people to buy from and several nice pieces were bought. We also took part in the first Gem Crystal and Fossil show held here in the Grafton Showgrounds on March 24 & 25. There was a good selection of stalls and even though the weather on Saturday wasn't the best, the weekend was a success. Here's to the ne...xt one in March next year. If you didn't go to this one, please think about it next year. You'd be amazed at how beautiful some of the minerals can be. The next show we go to is the Lismore Gemfest in May. It is one of the biggest shows in Australia We are now working on our entries for the Grafton Show which is on April 20th and 21st. We'd like everyone to put in at least one entry into the Lapidary section of the Show. The more entries we get, the better the exhibit is. The Lapidary Section Show Schedule can be obtained at the Clubrooms at the Showground when we are open for work. Entries are to be delivered to the Gem Club on Tues 17th April between 10.30am and 5pm. We'd also like members to fetch in their display boxes to give people an idea of how mineral collecting can make a great hobby and also what we can do with the rocks we collect. We also have a raffle of 3 pieces of handmade jewellery. This will be drawn at the end of the show. So, if you are going to the Grafton Show, come into the Gem Club and see how beautiful nature can be. Members please note that there will be no meeting in April as too many people will be away. The next meeting will be on May 12th. This will be at the new time of 10am and will be for 1 hour. If you have anything you would like to discuss, please write it on the Agenda sheet on the noteboard. Anything not listed will not be discussed. Quick rocky info. Amethyst is a form of quartz which contains iron and aluminium which gives it the lavender colour. The name comes from Greek and means 'not intoxicate' because they thought it stopped you getting drunk. This is why they had drinking vessels carved from it. I don't know if it worked for them but I don't think it would, do you? It is the birthstone for February. The club is open on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9am to 3 pm and Thursdays from 2pm to 8pm. If you'd be interested in joining us, please come in while we are working, we'd love to see you. ( courtesy of Barbra Watkins )

11.01.2022 At the moment, while we are making plans on how to handle reopening taking into consideration any restrictions at that time, we currently have no fixed date planned. When we have made our decision we will be announcing it on our Facebook page. At that time people will be welcome (also within any constraints) to come along to see us for any reason. If you are wanting an opinion on your rocks please understand that is all we can offer as we are a hobby club and do not have the equipment needed for absolute identification.

09.01.2022 Well, this time of year is a good time for going to Gem Shows. In March, there was Minerama in Glen Innes and the local show at the Grafton Showground. Over the Easter weekend, the National Gem Show was held in Rockhampton. The National show is held in a different State every year. Last year it was in Hahndorf SA, this year in Rockhampton QLD and Next year it will be in Albury NSW. Some Club members have been to each of these. However the really big show is in Lismore on M...ay 18 an 19. Many members will be going to this show and some even have a stall there. It is well worth a visit if you are in the neighbourhood as the different types of minerals can be mind blowing.. There are about 125 stall holders and many professional dealers who sell the machinery and bits and pieces we need to make our jewellery. The other big activity soon is the Grafton Show. Members have been working on their entries for the Lapidary section. If you are at the Show, please come in and see our entries. Also we have display boxes from members with items from their collections and other things of interest for you to see. We also have a raffle with three prizes of handmade jewellery. The 2nd biggest diamond ever found has been discovered in Botswana. It is 1758 carats. However it not very valuable as the colour and clarity are not very good meaning that it is not likely that a good gem could be cut from it.Still, it would make a great specimen piece. The clubrooms are open for work on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9am to about 3pm. If you are interested in "Rocky" things please come in and see us. We'd be glad to show you around and show you what we do. Barbara Watkins

08.01.2022 Preparations are underway for our entry in the Jacaranda Festival. It should look great. Members are also asked to bring in exhibition boxes of items from their collections to make a fantastic display for the Festival. The Club will be open all Jacaranda week from Sat Oct 28th to Sat Nov 4th. for visitors to come in to see what we do and the lovely things we make. Entry is $2 for adults and children are free. Opening times are 9am to 5pm from Sat Oct 28th to Friday 3rd Nov ...and 9am until the time the procession leaves the Showground on Sat 4th Nov. . So if you are waiting nearby for the procession to go, pop in and see us. Members will be demonstrating various activities during the week such as faceting, silversmithing, chain maille jewellery making and wire wrapping of polished stones. There will also be fossicking and lucky dip activities. We also have a raffle of 3 lovely handmade pieces of jewellery. You'll be surprised at the types of minerals and their amazing colours and how we use them to make beautiful things. We'd love to see you all at our Clubrooms in the Grafton Showgrounds during Jacaranda week. We are having another 6 week course of jewellery making for the members of Cranes. The first day was last Thursday where everyone made beaded bookmarks and started making a memory wire bracelet. Everyone enjoys their time with us and also the lovely things they make to take home with them. Thanks to all members who help with teaching. The Club took part in the Giant Garage Sale and it was quite successful. Also 3 members took part in the Quota Craft and Art Show in Yamba last weekend. It is amazing the creativity of local people. Visitors were interested in the jewellery and mineral specimens and what we make from them. Our next meeting is on 14th Oct at 2pm. Please attend if you can as we need everyone's input to have your say and keep things running smoothly. Now for my 'rocky info' The world's 2nd biggest rough diamond ever found has just been sold. It was the size of a tennis ball and weighed 1109 carats. It was sold for $57million . It will now be cut up and faceted and goodness knows what it will be worth then If you'd like to find out more about us, all in and see us at the clubrooms at the Grafton Showground on Tues and Sat from 9am to 3pm and Thurs from 2pm to 8pm. credit: Barbara Watkins

08.01.2022 Goodbye to 2018. I am sure that all members had a very profitable time during the past 12 months. New activities were begun and new machinery bought. We are very grateful to the two people who generously donated mineral collections to the club. The Grafton Show and Jacaranda were very successful and many people came in to see what we do in the clubrooms and the things we make.. Our Christmas party was held on Sat 15th Dec. Many members came and thanks to everyone bringing a... plate, we had a very nice meal. Everyone had a great time. Lyn was presented with her Life Member badge by Lorraine. James and Barbara celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary. The club will close on Tues 18th Dec and re-open on 15th Jan . We are hoping for another exciting year. We are considering changes to the layout of the club and also other new activities. We had quite a few new members join and hope that they are enjoying their work. It is always exciting the first time you take a piece of rock and turn it into something beautiful. When we re-open, if you think that you would like to join us please come to the clubrooms on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9am to approx 3pm. We have members quite skilled in various facets of the lapidary art and they are always willing to share their knowledge. So Merry Christmas to everyone and have a peaceful and prosperous New Year. (courtesy of) Barbara See more

07.01.2022 (this is a late posting, sorry :) -the admin ) What a great week we had for Jacaranda. Thank you so much to the many people who came in to see our display. We hope that you enjoyed looking at what we do with our lapidary work and what members collect. Thank you also to the club members who gave up their time to come in to look after our visitors and demonstrate various jewellery making processes. The three winners for our Jacaranda Raffle, 1st - D Ward, 2nd - D Maure, 3rd ...Amanda. The two winners of the treasure hunt were Addison and Lillian.We hope you all enjoy your prizes. Members will carry on with their work until we close for Christmas. Details for the Christmas party and dates for closing will be advised later. Now for my mineral trivia for this week. Elisa Zamfirescu born 10.11.1887 in Romania was one of the worlds first female engineers. She graduated in 1912. She became head of the laboratory in the Bucharest Goelogical Institute, She identified new resources of coal, natural gas, chromium, bauxite and copper. She introduced new methods and analysis techniques to study minerals. Some are still used today. She kept working until she was 75 and died aged 86. She is remembered as someone who mentored many young people. An award called the Premiul Elisa Leonida-Zamfirescu was established for women working in the science and technology fields. If your visit to our display made you interested in joining us, please come in and see us at the clubrooms in the Grafton Showgrounds. We are open for working on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9am to about 3pm. You will learn how to polish stones and facet gems and then put them in handmade settings and learn about the stones themselves. courtesy of Barbara Watkins

07.01.2022 Show entries for this year, well done everyone

05.01.2022 as the lining of the gem club is due to start on the 29th of may , everyone needs to come to the gem club next week to help get it ready, thanks

03.01.2022 Here are the varied display cases of our members at the show this weekend and a random shot of of one of our members :)

03.01.2022 Due to unforeseen circumstances , gem club will not be open on Saturday . We will hopefully be able to open on Tuesday the 27th, further updates will be provided when I receive more information , - Admin

02.01.2022 Some Christmas party photos 15/12/1018