A mother has discovered a sapphire worth $2,000 deep in the ground of her Outback estate while carrying her baby daughter and doing some ‘hand mining’.
Amber Betteridge found the Australian sapphire buried deep in the ground on Sunday at her Rubyvale estate near Rockhampton in Central Queensland.
The eagle-eyed mother was seen in a TikTok video carrying her nine-month-old daughter Elise as she searched for the gems.
Mrs Betteridge, whose husband Matt mines the sought-after gemstone in Queensland, spotted the stone covered under dozens of rocks.
Using her fingers and a small rock she found nearby, she began digging the mineral out of the ground.
To her surprise, Mrs. Betteridge discovered a 54-carat parti sapphire (a parti sapphire exhibits two or more different colors).
She told Daily Mail Australia she was shocked when she found the stone.
Amber Betteridge found the precious gemstone (pictured) on her property in Rubyvale in Queensland
Mrs Betteridge was walking with her baby (pictured) this weekend when she and her husband made the shocking discovery
“What we thought would be a little gem that wasn’t actually worth anything turned out to be this sapphire with a beautiful piece of crystal in it,” she said.
‘It has an absolutely stunning parti colour.’
The TikTok video of the find showed the bright green and blue colors of the stone, which became visible when Ms Betteridge placed the stone on her phone light.
Ms Betteridge said the stone could fetch as much as $6,000 after it is faceted.
“We could probably get a three- to four-carat stone out of it, but it depends on how it cuts,” she said.
“We facet the largest stone and depending on how it looks, it could potentially be worth $2,000 per carat.”
Ms Betteridge and her husband founded their company Betteridge Sapphires in 2021 after purchasing a mining claim in 2018.
Matt collects the sapphires in their underground mine with just a pick and a shovel, while Mrs. Betteridge facets the gems by removing the rough, which she says can take days.
The mother of two facets of sapphires (pictured), a job she does for a living after setting up a company to mine the stones with her husband in 2021
Matt (pictured), Mrs. Betteridge’s husband, regularly uploads Tiktok videos showing off sapphires
Matt regularly uploads TikTok videos of himself searching for sapphires.
He found an 834-carat sapphire worth an estimated $12,500 in the mud during an evening walk two years ago.
He didn’t much notice the shiny rock sticking out of the ground, but once he realized the rock was a sapphire, he rushed to grab his phone to film his latest discovery.
Parti sapphires are a mix of blue and yellow sapphires that give the gemstone an incredible double color and are often set in engagement rings.
Australia is one of the few places in the world where parti sapphires are found after the gemstones were first discovered by prospectors in the 1850s.