Sapphire Gemfields

The Sapphire Gemfields is Australia's largest sapphire fossicking area, located west of Emerald in the Central Highlands, Queensland. Centred on the townships of Anakie, Sapphire, Rubyvale and Willows along the Anakie Sapphire Road, it covers about 900 square kilometres. Notable as one of the world's major sapphire deposits, it has attracted fossickers and miners since the 1870s and offers public fossicking reserves and commercial fossicking parks.

Visitors can expect a semi-arid outback landscape of open woodland, creek beds and mullock heaps dotted with small townships. The area offers public fossicking reserves where visitors can search for sapphires in creek gravels, commercial fossicking parks that provide equipment and guided instruction, gem shops and cutting houses, small museums and heritage displays, and caravan parks and visitor information centres serving fossickers.