54060.0 - One piece of rough Natural Australian Turquoise Not Treated and Very Rare 535 carats 60 x 55 x 35 mm In a soft pastel blue colour

Please note: The background colour of the photo, cause the digital camera to calculate colours somewhat differently.
The result is that the blue in a blue/green stone is more pronounced against a black background, but the green becomes more pronounced against a white background.

This is a nice chunky piece of very rare Natural and un-treated Australian Turquoise, selected to give a very good yield, if cut into stones. It is also of the more dense and harder type of Australian Turquoise. This is in the top quality range of Australian Turquoise. It is very hard and dense and will take a good polish. It's neither stabilized nor dyed, just Mother Nature's natural colour which is a soft pastel blue which makes it stand out amongst Turquoise from most parts of the world.

Background: This Turquoise, our "TurqOZ", was mined by a public company in the early/mid 1970's and apparently is the only commercial Turquoise mine that has operated in Australia although the core of the mining operation was centered around mining for Zinc.

Many tons were purchased and then shipped to the USA by my gem exports company via AIRFREIGHT... in 44 gallon drums!

The mine was, however, forced to close down when approaching an Aboriginal sacred site and it's possible the mine ran out of Zinc and was no longer profitable.

So, when it seized mining, I bought all of the rough that the company had on hand in January, 1975, and just stored it away; becoming another classic case of my "out of sight, out of mind".

Until now, after nearly HALF A CENTURY in "hibernation" (time DOES fly away!) being "discovered" during a long overdue cleanup.