Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Emerald and The Gemfields are towns in Flynn that have a lot of great people and many places to visit. Emerald is the modern service centre for the entire central highlands region. It has major industries which include beef, with large stud cattle and commercial operators. We have 117,000 head of cattle go through the Emerald saleyards each year, which is about six per cent of the state's saleyards' through-put. It is the backbone of the CQ economy. One of the new beef products we produce is organic beef, which is proving very successful on the markets—both Australian markets and also the export markets.

Emerald is also famous for its agriculture and horticultural products. We have the 2PH farm, the largest a citrus-growing mandarin farm in the southern hemisphere. They export product to all over the globe. We have table grapes, cotton, wheat, high-grade wheat, hard biscuit wheat, macadamia nuts, melons, potatoes, mung beans and chickpeas. Chickpeas were very successful last season and added to our economy on the central highlands.

Of course, we have coal in the mining division. The Bowen Basin has high-quality black, coking and thermal coal. We have 32 coalmines in the district, employing about 25,000 workers in CQ. As for gem mining, the central highlands are home to some of the country's best sapphire mining. The towns of Sapphire, Emerald, Rubyvale, Anakie and Willows are towns that make up the gem fields. They are accordingly named along those lines. Other states have iconic towns like Lightning Ridge, Broken Hill in New South Wales, Coober Pedy in South Australia. In Western Australia you have Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie, which are famous towns that have been around for a long time. But we in Central Queensland have The Gemfields.

To celebrate the gem mining industry on The Gemfields each year is Gemfest. Gemfest is growing bigger and bigger each year. It is now in its 30th year, and it's on this weekend. Gates will open at 9 am. There are jewellery shops with plenty of made-up sapphire rings, bracelets and all types of jewellery that the shops out there have produced over the years for the tourist trade. Tourists flock to The Gemfields in those cool winter months. They come from all over Australia. The grey nomads are among the biggest things for the economy during those cooler months. There are heritage horse-drawn carriages and opportunities to learn to prospect—to be the best in the business. You can sieve for your own sapphires. Of course, there are food stalls. There are classes in lapidary—that is, the art of how to cut a rough sapphire stone into a beautiful bit of jewellery. There are all sorts of colours when it comes to sapphires: yellows, blues, greens and even pinks and, of course, the parti colour, which is the blue-green mixture. It's all there and it'll all be happening this weekend. I will be attending.

As part of our tourist attraction, we have the official opening of the Sapphire Gemfields Interpretive Trail. This covers the five towns in The Gemfields and it's a link between each of those villages. Tourists can go on a trail and at each town and between the towns there will be some sort of landmark feature that explains what has happened over the years gone by. Those are not young towns; they have been there for over 100 years. The common is a square mile of land that takes in most of Sapphire and some parts of Rubyvale. This is where animals—cows, goats and pigs—can all run freely throughout the town and no-one actually has the right to remove them unless it is severe drought weather.