Gem Mining

This morning we head off for Phum Throm gem field. Just out of Ban Lung we take a dirt road passed a rubber plantation. The housing here looks terrible, not much evidence of ‘trickle down’ economics from the large ornate building of the rubber company’s offices. Mostly, houses are a mixture of wood and tarpaulins or sheets. We drop Susan and Rory at the end of the track, they are heading off for an elephant ride into the forest and to visit some waterfalls. Mr Sin, driving, Votha, our gem guide, Paula and I, head back to the highway on the search for zircon miners.

Paula sealing the deal

Entrance to the mine - no way was I getting down there!

At the gem field known as Phum Throm we stop by the roadside and wander into a rubber plantation. Small mine shafts pock the landscape. They’re round (like the Chinese shafts on the Victorian goldfields), apparently the evil spirits cannot hide in the corners. The shaft is less than 2½ feet diameter, obviously not dug for robust miners like me or Paula and they are about 14 metres deep. Rich sandy red earth surrounds each hole. Weathered basalt, deep tropical weathering. We wander on and find evidence of more recent diggings but there are no miners present. Votha suggests we head on a couple of kilometers to the small village of Bokeo Clas where the miners might be enjoying lunch.

 

Another little mine

A morning's work

Bokeo Clas looks like most other small towns, a dozen or so ‘shops’, which are mostly cafés, and funny little mixed businesses attached to houses. Votha tracks down a  miner. We sit down in a very small café (think shack with tarpaulin). We say no to coffee, but Paula asks about coke. The miner returns with two small cans of coke. He shows us a handful of zircon crystals, mainly broken fragments, some with nice well-defined faces. Suddenly, we are surrounded by about 12 villagers, all bearing crystals, some with one or two, some with 5 or 6. They tend to produce them one or two at a time. The trick for us is not to mix up the batches, although they all seem to know their own stones.

 

Coke, and tense negotiations

We use Paula’s penlight torch to check the quality. Most have inclusions or have patchy colours. Paula is interested in the inclusions for her research. Most are of lower quality grade but with heat treatment they may improve. The stones turn from dark reddish brown to transparent blue when heated to about 900C and this is the fate of most of them.

I ask Votha for some guidance.  As always, he suggests asking them to name their price. The first miner we met asks US$30 for about 8 or 9 crystals, one is very good, for which he asks $120. Paula and I laugh, perhaps not the best thing to do.  Votha previously told me “name your price” back and bargain from there. If the miner sticks to his price then you can walk away but if he keeps moving closer you should allow him last price. I am aware of not setting a benchmark under the other stones on the table. We feel $5 is generous, so I offer $4. Meanwhile, more villagers appear thrusting one or two stones in our direction. Paula and I banter about getting out alive. There are miners, villagers, all around us. The miner, of course, rejects my offer and sticks at $30. I shake my head and tell Votha I’ll come back to him but not at $30. Paula asks Votha to tell him they are not of high quality, I wonder if this is the best message here now but wtf, we don’t want fleecing.

Hauling up one of 30 buckets in the morning

Votha reminds me it keeps everyone happy to buy from many. I wonder looking around, how many is ‘many’? The next lady puts five or so stones down and asks US$15, again outrageous! As I am keen to get some, I offer her $3, she laughs and so, taking Votha’s advice to go slowly, I chat with Paula about our chances of getting out alive if we buy nothing. Paula has material from here so is not so much in the market. Eventually, I offer $5 and the woman agrees. I ask her name and she say “Mah, Mah Mah” everyone laughs as apparently it means “fat”, and for a Cambodian she is portly. Now I have some, I can relax a bit more. A young girl shows me a large zircon crystal, not perfect but a good shape. She looks about 15. Again, she starts at $15. We laugh. I am very aware we are the centre of attention. Votha passes on our comments about price hikes. The field at Phum Throm has virtually closed so prices are rising. I offer $5. She asks $10 and we close at $8. And so it goes with a few other villagers. Every so often another person arrives with some crystals. The first miners at $30, I ask again, he takes his fragments off the table. I suspect he realises he has over-played.

We decide we have enough. By way of protest, the miner we didn’t buy from charged us a dollar each for our cokes (which I didn’t want in the first place!). We laugh a nervous laugh. It is quite exhausting doing this sort of barter. On the upside, I have acquired a rough zircon that is well provenanced.

As we are leaving, a ‘funny little man’ offers Paula a crappy lump of tektite (glass formed by a very large meteorite impact), we agree it looks like a ‘turd’ and his asking price of $10 is way out. Maybe as an act of charity, Paula offers $2. It was worth it for the reaction she got, the old ‘if looks could kill’ (given his mutterings, understanding Khmer would have been invaluable here). By way of comparison, I bought 5 very fine tektites for $10 the previous day.

Mr Sin drives us to a nearby cafe for lunch. Votha and Mr Sin go elsewhere for lunch.

After lunch we go to visit the mine sites. In a rubber plantation there are excavations, and miners. We have to walk across a stick to cross a ditch. Easy for Votha, I worry the stick will give way or I’ll loose my balance. I make it, not with any real encouragement from Paula!  We walk over to a miner winding a windlass, a scene reminiscent of the goldfields in the 1850s. He is very young and very lean and has a very sweaty back. Cambodians don’t seem to sweat. I, stupidly, suggest Paula could rub him down, and she warms to the idea. But we move on to talk to him instead.  He shows us two crystal fragments, neither are particularly gemmy but they are not crazed. Lower grade fodder for heat treatment. He tells us that he has raised about 30 large buckets of dirt, up 12 metres, for these two. Votha suggest $2 for the stones, which is considerably more than they will get from the gem dealers. We settle on $3. I still feel guilty as I have seen him toil, winding the bucket up and constantly sending it back to his mate below. Again, like the Victorian goldfields, one hole could be very rich, the adjacent one could have nothing. Mining here is extremely dangerous work. The shafts are in fine powdery soil.  Many miners die each year from cave-ins.

Another shaft

We visit another small group of miners and buy a few stones. All the miners look very young. One says he is 19, I wonder if I could get Rory work. The miners tell us that there is a new Phum Throm and we drive a few kilometers to another rubber plantation, which is across the road from our first foray of the day. There, we again seen a small mining scene. A miner tells us there are two foreigners down a hole. At first we think he is inviting us to go down the hole.  There ain’t enough butter in Cambodia to get me down there! Anywho, down there were two young South Africans, one a recent geology graduate. Votha and Paula strongly chastise them about the risk. The blonde girly said “well we’re ok”. I think, “where have I heard that before, Rory?!”

Pock-marked Landscape

As we head back to Ban Lung, Votha again assures us we did ok. Also, it is the only opportunity to get material from the source and know where it is from. Paula’s research is looking at the source of the zircons and what they reveal about the upper mantle-lower crust of the Earth. The basaltic lavas that bring them to the surface are now deeply weathered.  They are very like zircons we find in Victoria. Perhaps we should heat treat some Victorian zircons. Here, the best go for $150+ a carat.

In town we visit two gem dealers rather than the stalls in the market.  Votha tells us the market shops in town are full of fakes and our experience tells us the same. The first dealer has some very nice stones. We look at a lot but agree not to buy until we see the second dealer. He is a surly bloke that owns a crucible where he heat treats raw zircons to turn them blue. He shows us a lot of rough, including offering a 1kg bag for $3,000.  Good value if you have a tame cutter! It is about 3.30pm and we are tired and hot and decide to put it off until the morning.  We decide we like the first dealer better. We do get a couple of hundred grams of ‘rough’ each from a different field from Mr Surly but there is a mix-up in the deal and we pay an extra $6 ($3 each). Votha apologises for the mix-up but in the scheme of things it really doesn’t matter.

Mines in the rubber plantation

We get back to “Tree Tops” feeling quite knackered. Susan and Rory are waiting to go for a swim in the volcanic crater-lake near by. As we had sent Mr Sin off, they head off on the back of motorbikes (I ignore the fine print on the travel insurance and hope if they do have an accident they just get left by the side of a road and the local people claim it’s heat stroke!) In Queensland they’d probably get arrested for associating with bikies.

..... and there's more

I have a beer and contemplate my role in the capitalist chain of gemstone mining..... I wonder if the miners can contemplate that their efforts will be preserved in museums in Canada and Australia or that Paula will be able to tell them their crystal is 700,000 years old.....give or take a week or two...... And why should that be important to them?