Located approximately 70 km South of Forsayth.
Agate Creek is a tributary of the Robertson River.

The agate creek collecting area covers approximately 45 km2 and is approximately 11 km in length.

Australia's premier agate locality. The first report of the locality in the literature was in the 1892 book Opals and Agates by Nehemiah Bartley. Bartley had visited the very remote location and gave the following account: “And how shall I describe this Sinbad's Valley, where agates are, the only real actual treasury of this kind on the face of the earth? …here we have the central valley itself, walled with cliffs, and grass-grown in places, and, in the centre, filled with agates of every size, shape, and colour, with more and more of them if you only choose to dig under the grass and soil at the sides, and unearth the buried treasures; while in the middle of the dry channel, where water runs in wet seasons, you may wade in tons of agates, sardonyx, onyx, and carnelian; and such ones, too!”
In 1900, W.E. Cameron of the Queensland Geological Survey reported the exact location of Agates Creek as a tributary of the Robertson River in the map accompanying his report on the Etheridge and Gilbert Goldfields. The map was marked “porcellainised shales underlying basalt with agates and carnelian stones.”

The locality seems to have been neglected in the first half of the 20th century owing to its remoteness and the abundance of agate on the world market from other sources such as Brazil and Idar Oberstein. Howard (2005) noted that in 1945 a Mr. G. Price mined a seam of blue-grey chalcedony varying in thickness from 50-300 mm and sold several hundredweight of the material for an average price of two shillings and sixpence a pound.

With the rise in interest in lapidary and rock hounding in the 1950's both hobbyists and commercial small-scale miners took an interest in the early reports of Bartley's Sinbad's Valley. According to Buchester (1972) a small group of enthusiastic Brisbane collectors set out to make the journey to Agate Creek. There were no guides and they practically had to make their own roads, however the agates collected and their accounts led to renewed interest in the locality. These collectors may have been Arthur (The Bear) Vievers and party. According to Wheeley (1976)"Arthur (The Bear) Vievers remembers that in about 1962 a Brisbane man named Ralph Barker showed him some stone which he (Barker) had brought out from Agate Creek. Arthur decided to go in and take a look himself. He, Burt Flanagan and a school teacher named Stanger drove to the place, it taking them all day to reach the breached dam. Next morning they proceeded further to find agate laying everywhere - to quote Arthur "Like spuds on top of the ground"".


During the 1960's and 1970's thousands of collectors visited the locality and eventually the area was designated fossicking area.

A fossicking licence is required whenever collecting here.

Some agates display fluorescence.

Localities in this Region

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References