Prologue: The Mathematics of Depletion

1960: Anakie Gemfields production: 10,000+ carats annually
2000: 3,200 carats annually (↓68%)
2024: 400 carats annually (↓96% from peak)
2030: Estimated viable mining remaining: 0-8 years

The Anakie Gemfields—source of the world's finest parti sapphires—are running dry.

Three generations mined these fields. The third will watch them die.

This is the story of the last sapphire. The miner who found it. And what we do when beauty runs out.

Part I: The Grandfather's Era (1958-1995)

The Beginning

1958. Thomas McKenzie, 22 years old, arrived at the Anakie Gemfields.

The earth was rich. Red dirt. Endless sapphires. You could dig anywhere and find something.

From his journal, 1958:

'This land is a miracle. Sapphires everywhere. Beautiful stones. Perfect stones. More than we could ever need.

We're rich. All of us. This will last forever.'

The Golden Years

1960s-1980s. The boom years.

Hundreds of miners. Thousands of carats. Fortunes made.

Thomas found parti sapphires that would sell for $50,000+ today. He sold them for $500. Didn't matter. There were always more.

From his journal, 1972:

'Found a 4.2-carat parti today. Vivid blue-green. Perfect. Sold it for $800.

Tomorrow I'll find another. The earth is generous. Infinite.'

The First Warning

1985. Thomas noticed something.

From his journal:

'Digging deeper now. The easy stones are gone. Have to work harder for smaller finds.

But there's still plenty. Just have to dig deeper.'

He didn't understand what this meant. None of them did.

The earth wasn't infinite. It was depleting.

The Realization

1995. Thomas was 59. Had been mining for 37 years.

From his journal, his last entry:

'I've taken so much from this land. Thousands of carats. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I never thought about what I was taking. Never thought it would run out.

But it is running out. I can feel it. The earth is tired.

What have we done?'

He died three months later. Heart attack. Age 59.

His son inherited his claim. And his guilt.

Part II: The Father's Era (1995-2024)

The Inheritance

James McKenzie, 28, took over his father's claim in 1995.

The fields were already depleted. Production down 40% from the 1970s peak.

But James kept mining. What else could he do? It was all he knew.

The Decline

1995-2000: Production dropped 25%
2000-2010: Production dropped another 45%
2010-2020: Production dropped 60%
2020-2024: Production dropped 75%

James watched it happen. Helpless.

'We're mining the last of it,' he told his son in 2020. 'Your grandfather's generation took the easy stones. My generation took what was left. Your generation... there won't be anything for your generation.'

The Guilt

James kept his father's journals. Read them often.

The early entries—full of abundance, optimism, the belief that it would last forever.

The final entry—the realization, too late, of what they'd done.

James added his own entry in 2023:

'Dad, you were right to feel guilty. We took everything. We thought it was infinite. We were wrong.

I've spent 28 years mining what you left behind. And now there's almost nothing left.

I'm sorry. To you. To the land. To my son, who will inherit exhausted earth.

We should have stopped. We should have left some for the future.

But we didn't. And now it's too late.'

Part III: The Son's Era (2024-Present)

The Last Miner

Daniel McKenzie, 32, is the third generation. Possibly the last.

He mines part-time. There's not enough left to mine full-time.

Most days, he finds nothing. Some days, small stones. 0.5 carats. 1 carat. Worth $200-$500.

Not enough to live on. Just enough to keep trying.

November 14, 2024

Daniel was digging in his grandfather's old claim. The spot where Thomas found his first parti in 1958.

He'd dug there hundreds of times. Found nothing for years.

Then his shovel hit something.

He brushed away the dirt.

A sapphire. 3.8 carats. Parti. Blue-green. Vivid. Perfect.

The best stone found in the Anakie Gemfields in five years.

Possibly the last great stone these fields will ever produce.

The Weight

Daniel held the stone. Looked at it. Cried.

Not from joy. From grief.

'This is it,' he said to the empty field. 'This is the last one. After this, there's nothing.'

He thought about his grandfather. Finding stones like this every week. Selling them for nothing. Never thinking it would end.

He thought about his father. Watching the decline. Feeling the guilt. Unable to stop.

He thought about himself. The last miner. Holding the last stone.

'What do I do with this?' he asked the land.

The land didn't answer.

Part IV: The Reckoning

The Accounting

Daniel did the math. Estimated total sapphires extracted from Anakie Gemfields, 1870-2024:

Total carats mined: ~2.8 million carats
Total value (current prices): ~$4.2 billion
Number of miners: ~15,000 over 154 years
Carats remaining (estimated): 50,000-150,000 (2-5% of original)

At current extraction rates: 8-12 years of viable mining left

Then: The Anakie Gemfields will be exhausted. Forever.

What Was Taken

2.8 million carats of sapphires. Formed over 200 million years. Extracted in 154 years.

Formation time: 200,000,000 years
Extraction time: 154 years
Ratio: We took in 154 years what took 200 million years to create

Daniel sat with this number. Tried to comprehend it.

200 million years of geological processes. Heat. Pressure. Time. Creating beauty.

154 years of human extraction. Taking it all.

'We're not miners,' he said. 'We're thieves. Stealing from the future.'

What Remains

The land is scarred. Thousands of mining pits. Disturbed earth. Changed hydrology.

But nature is resilient. Wildflowers grow in old pits. Native grasses return. Birds nest in abandoned equipment.

The land will heal. Eventually.

But the sapphires won't come back. Not in human timescales. Not in a thousand human lifetimes.

What's gone is gone forever.

Part V: The Choice

What to Do With the Last Stone

Daniel held the 3.8-carat parti. Worth $18,000-$22,000.

He had three options:

Option 1: Sell it. Get the money. Pay bills. Feed his family.

Option 2: Keep it. As a reminder. Of what was. Of what's gone. Of what we did.

Option 3: Bury it. Return it to the earth. Let it be the first stone of the next 200 million years.

The Conversation With His Father

'What should I do?' Daniel asked James.

'I don't know,' James said. 'Your grandfather would have sold it without thinking. I would have kept it out of guilt. But you... you're the last. You get to decide what this all meant.'

'What do you think it meant?'

'I think we took beauty from the earth and turned it into money. And now the beauty is gone and the money is spent and all that's left is empty land and guilt.

But maybe you can make it mean something else. Maybe you can make it mean: we learned. We stopped. We left something for the future.'

The Decision

Daniel thought for three days.

Then he made his choice.

He took the stone to the exact spot where his grandfather found his first sapphire in 1958.

He dug a hole. Two feet deep.

He placed the stone in the hole.

And he buried it.

'This is the last sapphire from the Anakie Gemfields,' he said to the land. 'I'm giving it back.

My grandfather took from you. My father took from you. I'm returning what I can.

It's not enough. It will never be enough. But it's what I have.

Maybe in 200 million years, someone will find this stone again. And maybe they'll be wiser than we were.

Or maybe no one will ever find it. And it will just be... yours again.

Either way, I'm done taking.'

He covered the hole. Marked it with a small cairn.

And walked away.

Part VI: What Comes After

The Gemfields Today

2024. The Anakie Gemfields are dying.

A few miners remain. Finding less and less. Most have given up.

The land is healing. Slowly. Wildflowers. Native grasses. Birds.

In 10-15 years, there will be no viable mining left.

The Anakie Gemfields—source of the world's finest parti sapphires for 154 years—will be exhausted.

What the Miners Are Doing

Some are leaving. Finding other work. Moving on.

Some are staying. Becoming tour guides. Showing tourists where the sapphires used to be.

Some are planting. Rehabilitating the land. Trying to heal what they damaged.

Daniel is planting. Native trees. Grasses. Flowers.

'I can't bring back the sapphires,' he says. 'But I can bring back the land.'

The Museum

There's talk of a museum. Documenting the history. The boom. The decline. The end.

Displaying sapphires from the golden years. Telling the story of what was found. What was lost.

Daniel donated his grandfather's journals. His father's notes. His own reflections.

'Future generations should know what happened here,' he says. 'Not to celebrate it. To learn from it.

We found beauty and we took it all. We didn't think about tomorrow.

That's the lesson. That's what we leave behind.'

Part VII: The Philosophy of Endings

Mono no Aware (物の哀れ)

Japanese concept: 'The pathos of things.' The bittersweet awareness of impermanence.

The Anakie Gemfields are ending. This is sad. But it's also... natural. Inevitable. Real.

All things end. All beauty is temporary. All abundance depletes.

The question isn't: How do we make it last forever?

The question is: How do we honor what was? How do we learn from the ending?

Scarcity and Value

As the Anakie Gemfields deplete, Australian parti sapphires become more valuable.

2000: Average parti sapphire: $800/carat
2024: Average parti sapphire: $2,400/carat
2030 (projected): $5,000-$8,000/carat

Scarcity creates value. The last stones will be worth more than the first.

But is that good? Is that what we want?

We're celebrating scarcity. Profiting from depletion. Making money from the fact that there won't be any more.

Daniel finds this obscene. 'We destroyed something beautiful. And now we're getting rich from its destruction. That's not value. That's grave robbing.'

What We Owe the Future

Three generations mined the Anakie Gemfields.

The first generation took abundance for granted.

The second generation watched it decline.

The third generation will see it end.

What do we owe the fourth generation? The ones who will never find a sapphire here?

Daniel's answer: 'We owe them the truth. We owe them the land, healed. We owe them the lesson: Don't do what we did.'

Epilogue: The Last Stone

The 3.8-carat parti sapphire is buried in the Anakie Gemfields.

Worth $20,000. Returned to the earth.

Daniel visits the spot sometimes. Sits by the cairn. Thinks about his grandfather. His father. The land. The stones. The ending.

'I buried the last great sapphire from these fields,' he says. 'Not because I'm noble. Because I'm guilty.

My grandfather took without thinking. My father took while feeling guilty. I stopped.

It's not enough. It doesn't undo what was done. But it's what I can do.

The stone is back in the earth. Where it belongs. Where it will stay.

Maybe forever. Maybe 200 million years. Maybe until someone wiser than us finds it.

I don't know. But I know this: I'm done taking.'

The Lessons: What Endings Teach

Lesson #1: Nothing Lasts Forever

The Anakie Gemfields seemed infinite. They weren't.

All abundance depletes. All beauty is temporary. All things end.

The question is: Do we accept this? Or do we take everything before it's gone?

Lesson #2: Scarcity Is Created, Not Natural

The sapphires didn't run out naturally. We ran them out.

We extracted in 154 years what took 200 million years to form.

Scarcity isn't inevitable. It's a choice. We chose it.

Lesson #3: Value and Destruction Are Linked

As sapphires become scarce, they become valuable.

We profit from depletion. Celebrate scarcity. Make money from endings.

Is this what we want? To get rich from destruction?

Lesson #4: Guilt Isn't Enough

James felt guilty. It didn't stop him from mining.

Guilt without action is just performance. Feeling bad while continuing to do harm.

Daniel stopped. That's the difference.

Lesson #5: We Owe the Future

The fourth generation will inherit exhausted land. No sapphires. Just scars and stories.

What do we owe them? Truth. Healing. The lesson: Don't do what we did.

The Bottom Line: What We Leave Behind

The Anakie Gemfields are ending. 8-12 years of viable mining left. Then: nothing.

Three generations took 2.8 million carats. The fourth generation will inherit empty earth.

One miner found the last great stone. And buried it.

Not because it solves anything. Because it's all he could do.

The question for all of us: What are we taking that won't come back? What are we leaving for those who come after?

Every Australian sapphire we sell comes with this knowledge: these stones are finite. The fields are depleting. In 10-15 years, there may be no more. We're not celebrating this. We're documenting it. Honoring it. And asking: What do we owe the future? If you buy a sapphire from us, you're buying one of the last. Not because we want scarcity. Because it's the truth. And the truth matters more than profit.