Are diamonds really a girl’s best friend? Tricia McGill

 

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Not this girl’s that is for sure. I have never understood the weird fascination some members of the human race possess for shiny objects brought up from beneath the earth’s crust. Personally, the only so called precious substance I have or have ever possessed is my wedding band made of gold, and a small pendant with an opal drop purchased for me by my husband in Broome where all the best pearls come from. I think pearls are ugly to be truthful—and feel sorry for the poor old oysters forced to grow them.

As for diamonds, the ugly truth of diamond mining is the horrendous tally of folk who died over the years while working in the mines. Two of my most treasured pieces of jewellery are a dainty marquisette watch and a ring given to me by my mother and a sister on my 21^st birthday a long time ago. The watch gave up working years ago as it is one of those wind up versions, but is still tucked away amongst my other pieces of memorabilia. Marquisette is practically useless these days but these pieces are more precious to me than all your diamonds or gold.

Right, don’t get me started on gold! I watched a program on gold being processed here in Australia. A small brick of it could not be picked up by a woman and was valued at some amazingly high amount. Similar to the diamond mining, so many gold crazed men—and women—died in their quest for this shiny substance. It is just a piece of shiny rock when all is said and done.

On our voyage from England to Australia years ago, we took an unforgettable side trip to Egypt, visiting Giza and the Cairo museum containing all of the artefacts from Tutankhamen’s tomb. So much gold, it is mind-boggling. The boy’s burial chamber contained his gold throne along with his mummy and his funerary mask, plus three golden coffins (said to contain 110 kilograms of pure gold). In the Valley of Kings, it is fact that 62 tombs had already been ransacked by the time they were discovered by archaeologists. It is difficult to imagine the amount of gold that must have been taken—and just where did it end up? Ancient Egyptians called gold ‘The flesh of the gods’ and thought it possessed special powers, so presumably that was why they hoarded it in such great quantities. A British Egyptologist has

found new evidence that Tutankhamen’s death mask was in fact made for his stepmother Queen Nefertiti. Using ground-penetrating radar to scan around Tutankhamun’s tomb archaeologist Mamdouh Eldamaty has reported that her tomb may be in a space behind his burial chamber.

Back to that Australian gold mania. Edward Hargraves first found payable goldfields near Bathurst NSW in 1851. News spread like wildfire not only around Australia but around the world and by 1852, 370,000 gold seekers arrived here.  So began a series of gold rushes, which transformed the colonies here as it did elsewhere in the world. Most people have heard of The Welcome Stranger, considered by authorities on the subject to be the largest gold nugget ever found. John Deason and Richard Oates found it at a place called Moliagul here in my home state of Victoria in 1869. The nugget weighed in at 2,520 troy ounces (over 78 Kgs) and had to be broken up so that it could be weighed. Then it was worth about 10,000 pounds and in today’s market would be worth about 4 million dollars. I wonder where all those pieces ended up.

I wear rings and earrings of course I do, but none of them are worth more than a few hundred dollars, if that, but mean a lot to me as they were given to me by special people in my life and are treasured. Fact is I would be scared to walk around with expensive objects on my person. My husband bought me a really nice ring with a topaz stone in Singapore and sad to say I lost it while on holiday at Broken Hill years ago—so it seems I am not to be trusted with expensive stuff anyway, and so avoid it.

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