Finding his own gemstones in the Australian desert has provided 12 years of thrills for Alexandra jeweller Denis Litchfield, but a tough new challenge has spelled the end of an era. Pam Jones talks to the outback adventurer about sapphires and stem cells.
On the face of it, they have nothing in common. Sapphires and stem cells — as different as can be.
But for Alexandra adventurer Denis Litchfield the search for one gave him strength for the other. Doctors said the fortitude he’d gained finding gemstones in the desert allowed him to cope with the rigours of a pioneering treatment to tackle his toughest challenge ever. The sapphires had done their work. Now it was up to the stem cells to do theirs.
Mr Litchfield has been mining a small claim in Queensland for 12 years and found countless gemstones for his artisan jewellery. The raw sapphires are inspected, cut and polished and set into one-off pieces of jewellery, most recently in partnership with Clyde jeweller Roy De Cort.
The quest for the sapphires is "real bush stuff". Only hand-held tools are allowed for working Mr Litchfield’s 90sqm claim, so its 10m deep underground shaft and tunnels are cut by Mr Litchfield using electric jackhammers. Dirt is then hand-shovelled into barrows, then into a bucket pulled by electric winch up and over to a trommel which removes the larger rocks and sand and dust.
The sapphire-bearing stones are caught in a wheelbarrow, shovelled into a mesh sieve and the sapphires, being heavier than the other stones, sink to the bottom.
Mr Litchfield’s wife, Nan, gets the all-important job of rinsing the mesh sieve and inverting it on to a bench where the sapphires are now on the top. With a prospector’s eye she plucks out the raw sapphires, which are "diamonds in the rough", so to speak, bearing hardly any resemblance to the tiny cut-edged stones which find their way into precious jewellery.
The first thing most people don’t realise is that sapphires are not only blue, Mr Litchfield says. They can also be green, yellow, orange, pink or a mix of colours (called "parti" sapphires), all being different varieties of corundum, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. The gemstones become their final colour depending on other impurities or trace elements they pick up — titanium makes blue sapphires, iron makes them green or yellow and chromium makes them red. The red stones are known as rubies — a ruby is actually a red sapphire — although these are not common in Australia.
But the main thing people don’t realise is how hard it is to get sapphires. A friend once made a 15-minute video showing Mr Litchfield working underground and the journey of the sapphires from the ancient earth to Mr Litchfield’s hand. Watching it, I’m dumbfounded by the guts and grit it takes to release such riches. Mr Litchfield says it’s a case of a picture being worth a thousand words.
"When people see it [the video] they understand how hard it is to get them [the sapphires]."
Mr Litchfield stumbled across the Rubyvale area of his mine about 14 years ago, when visiting a friend who had a claim there.
Having always had a fascination with geology and gemstones, he staked a claim too, swooning at the sapphires he started chipping from the outback earth.
"To be the first human being to hold that stuff — you just don’t know what you’re going to find in there, and that to me is fascinating. No-one else, no human, has ever had their hands on the gemstones I’m finding. That, to me, is why this [finding gemstones] is such a precious thing. Deep down in the earth, we still don’t know what’s under there — there’s so much excitement wondering what’s there ... The satisfaction of knowing the hard work that’s taken place to get the gemstones — there’s a little bit of a buzz in it. It’s 100% fun and adventure."
Troubled by blood diamond-style Third World mines where vulnerable workers can be exploited and gemstones sourced on the back of violence and suffering, Mr Litchfield is proud of the small-scale, ethical nature of his mining operation.
It increases the pride in his work, and he is doubly proud to furnish the gemstones for one-off jewellery pieces that provide meaningful alternatives to bulk-bought stones from unknown markets.
But the miner-jeweller — who also spent many years deer culling in a former life — is now changed by another "adventure", one that has spelled the end of an era for his Australian mine.
In late 2015, Mr Litchfield was diagnosed with the blood cancer myeloma, following a period of back pain after he had just returned from one of his annual stints working his Australian mine.
He received chemotherapy treatment at Dunstan and Dunedin hospitals, but then doctors suggested something a little bit different — stem cell treatment at Christchurch Hospital.
Mr Litchfield and his wife spent three months, from February to April, last year living at Ranui House in Christchurch while he underwent his gruelling stem cell schedule — the harvesting of his stem cells, then heavy chemotherapy to kill the stem cells in his bone marrow, then his own stem cells being put back into his body, periods of isolation and more chemotherapy. With characteristic understatement he uses bush terminology to describe the almost tortuous experience.
"I was right in the swamp."
Mr Litchfield completed his treatment last October and is now in remission. But as well as his thanks to modern medicine for the stem cell treatment he received, he remains indebted to Ranui House for providing a home for him and his wife at no cost during his treatment.
"Ronald McDonald House in Christchurch is for children only, but Ranui House — owned by the Bone Marrow Cancer Trust — is for adults and all families, and helps not only people having treatment for blood and bone marrow cancers, but the families of many people having treatment for other things, too. I’m indebted to them. We would have been lost if we didn’t have a place like that."
So, while 12 years of digging up sapphires has already put a permanent glint in Mr Litchfield’s eye, it is talk of medical research and Ranui House that now excites his conversation.
Determined to try to repay Ranui House for the priceless assistance it gave him, he has already raised thousands of dollars for the facility through an event in Gore and by organising the donation of Central Otago prizes for a Christchurch fundraiser. He hopes to hold another fundraiser at the Alexandra District Club for Ranui House, too.
Mr Litchfield’s illness meant he did not make it to Rubyvale for his annual mining stint last year (he usually goes for several months every year), and has regrettably led to him selling his claim. He says his physical and mental energy now needs to be conserved for any future health battles.
Last month, he travelled back to the mine for his final stint there, to "tie up loose ends" and bring back the last of the sapphires he has mined.
He has mixed feelings about the changes. It’s a wrench leaving the mine, which has been "the most diverse of all the adventures I’ve had".
But he’s looking forward to seeing what else he can turn his hand to; he has enjoyed previous tutoring stints and loves showing visitors around his Alexandra workshop, and he has many sapphires still to turn into jewellery.
"I’m a bush person and a country person — I like the hills. I like trying everything out and doing new things and changing adventures. Everything I’ve done has been an adventure. Even having cancer has been an adventure."
