The Agate Man – Sir Paul Howard

Abstract

Agate Creek is a world-class Australian fossicking area located in remote northern Queensland. Its beautiful agates and thunder eggs are sought by collectors worldwide, each one being unique. This article honours the lifelong work of Paul Howard on the Agate Creek locality, his collection and research which culminated in his 2005 book. The Agate Project (a high-resolution photo database of cut and polished agates for research and teaching) is proposed as a tribute to Paul Howard and other collectors who wish to take part in the project.

Introduction

Paul Howard is the quintessential ‘Agate Man’ (Figure 1). He has been fossicking at the Agate Creek Fossicking Area in northern Queensland – one of the world’s premier fossicking sites – since 1984. Paul has focused much of his life’s research into agate formation and inclusions, and contributed significantly to lapidary arts and crafts, in particular wire-wrap jewellery. A man with lively enthusiasm and a ready sense of humour, he was knighted as Sir Paul Howard by Prince Leonard of the Hutt River Principality (a small ‘country’ on the Australian continent proclaimed in 1970 and dissolved in 2020).

Fossicking for Queensland Agate by Sir Paul Howard KRO (Knight of the Royal Order) was self-published in 2005. The book was printed in Australia as a soft cover (5,000 copies), as a limited edition autographed hardcover (1,000 copies) and produced as a DVD. It is currently available from the Gold Coast Lapidary Club.

When asked why he wrote the book, Paul replied:

“I realised there have been so many experienced people going to Agate Creek looking for gemstones, with all of them taking their knowledge to the grave, so I decided I don’t want to be one of those people – after 33 years of fossicking I want to write a book and share all I have learned with newcomers to the field.”

Paul’s book, about twenty years in the making, was a “true labour of love”. He began the project on an electric typewriter and later transferred it to the computer “which made the job so much easier”. The book was launched at the National Gem and Mineral Show (Gemboree) in Bathurst in 2005 and free copies were distributed to lapidary clubs throughout Australia.

“I’ve given most of them away,” Paul states, “I can’t take all those damn books with me when I go. I’ve made them for the club members and any new member should get one for free.”

Paul’s book is aimed specifically at those planning a fossicking trip to Agate Creek, covering the logistics of camping in such a remote area, how and where to fossick for the agates, and Paul’s knowledge of the geologic setting of the deposit. The high-quality cover of the book, designed by Susan Tester, features a photograph of an Agate Creek fossicking site cropped to the shape of a Queensland map overlaid onto an assortment of rough agates collected by the author. The book is a treasure trove of information for anyone interested in the area and has become a valuable travelling companion for many.

History

The fascinating history of the Agate Creek field begins with its discovery as told in a story published in 1892 by Nehemiah Bartley (1830–1894), an English-born Australian merchant who worked in the Colony of Queensland, who describes “stumbling across the deposit of agate” in the remote part of the new Colony of Queensland. His copious praise about the treasures he saw were extravagant, so much so he called the place “Sinbad’s Valley.” The locality was lost in obscurity until after the Second World War when a ‘rush’ began on the field with mechanised mining and explosives being used to extract agates. This sparked hundreds of letters of complaint to the Department of Mines which led to amendments to the mining regulations effectively prohibiting the use of any form of machinery on the field to mine for agate, thus forever preserving the area for hand fossicking.

Geology and Varieties of Agate

Over geologic time, silica-bearing waters percolated from overlying strata into interconnected open cavities (vesicles) in the upper parts of the volcanic lava flows. Slowly, layer by layer, silica coated the walls of the cavities as microcrystalline quartz, cryptocrystalline quartz, or opaline silica variously coloured by different trace elements, eventually filling them to form the gem amygdules (geodes). Those in the typically star-shaped cavities of the rhyolites are called thunder eggs (Figure 2), while their more intricately-banded cousins, the agates, form in oval-shaped cavities of the basaltic andesite flows (Figures 3 and 4).

Agates and thunder eggs, weathered from their host formations, are found along Agate Creek and its tributaries, or they may be dug from in situ soils overlying the weathered lava flows. Interestingly, each different fossicking site at Agate Creek is characterised by its own highly distinctive agates. For example, Crystal Hill has agates that are often full of clear crystal quartz; Pony’s Pocket produces onyx-banded agate; Pink Patch produces pink and white porcelain agates which lack the translucency of other agates found on the field; Simpson’s Gully is noted for its beautiful green and yellow agates; Blue Hill has dark blue agates with pink or red centres. Agates from the field average about 5–6cm along their longer axis while smaller ones are more common.

Getting There and Camping at Agate Creek

Travelling to, and camping in, an area as remote as Agate Creek requires significant planning. Inhospitable during the hot monsoon summers, the area can only be accessed from May to September when the creeks are mainly dry, and there are significant dangers for the inexperienced. For this reason, Paul has included comprehensive locality maps and what-to-take checklists including camping equipment, fossicking gear, bush food menu suggestions, toiletries, vehicle spare parts, caravan items, and essential first aid kit supplies – bearing in mind that the nearest large town, Georgetown, is 120km distant and some 2.5 to 3 hours’ drive away.

Inclusions in Agate

In his ‘Beauty Within’ chapter, Paul describes the little-studied inclusions he has found and photographed in agates over the years. These include protogenetic inclusions formed around the walls of the cavity prior to infilling such as acicular bundles of aragonite crystals, goethite crystals and dog-tooth calcite; syngenetic inclusions including pseudomorphs after protogenetic inclusions and features such as escape or exit tubes caused by overpressure, deformation or movement during agate formation (for examples, see Figure 4); and epigenetic inclusions such as manganese dendrites and secondary colour staining superimposed on the original agate banding.

Jewellery Made from Agate

In this chapter, Paul introduces the wire- wrapped jewellery technique as an easy method of turning polished agate into beautiful and wearable pieces of jewellery using 14ct gold wire of various gauges (Figure 5). Over the years, Paul has taught hundreds of students the technique of wire-wrapped jewellery in both Australia and the United States, and founded the Gold Coast School of Wirecraft.

Dangers on the Field and Getting ‘Unlost’

In this section, Paul highlights the unseen dangers present at Agate Creek, including venomous snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, wasps, ticks, heat exhaustion and dehydration. He goes to great length with the first aid treatment for each (correct at the time the book was written), and also dedicates a number of pages to becoming ‘unlost’ if you become lost at Agate Creek while your eyes are glued to the ground searching for your next prize.

The pages of the book are adorned with Paul’s high-quality photographs of polished agates, useful maps and photos of the different fossicking sites at Agate Creek, sketches, and even poetry to lure the reader from the manifold pressures of urban living into the carefree lifestyle of an itinerant outback fossicker, such as the following poem by Darcy La Mont (1969):

So if you’re tired of chasing the Jones’s
And feel you would like to be free
Just throw all your things in your wagon
And come seeking agates with me.
No rent do I pay to the landlord
No debts do I owe on HP
No worry at all about taxes
And my wood and my water’s buckshee.
I’m as free as the birds in the ether
For I’ve nothing to lose, all to gain
And if I want to live my life over
I’d go seeking agates again.

More About the Author

As a young lad, Paul Howard travelled extensively around Australia working at various odd jobs – as dancer, a waiter in restaurants, driving buses – and recognised his love of gemstones early on in life. He collected plenty of pretty-looking rounded pebbles from creeks, rivers, and beaches along the way, but by the time he got them home he found they had dried out and become dull and unattractive, hence, he figured he’d better join a lapidary club in order to learn how to polish them and restore their beauty.

So, Paul joined the Gold Coast Lapidary Club. Back then it was only a small club and he became member number 33. It is worth noting that nowadays the Gold Coast Lapidary Club, of which Paul is an honorary life member and which houses his extensive agate collection (Figure 6), boasts 210 financial members, is open six days a week plus two evenings, with classes in cabochon-making, faceting, opal polishing, casting and silversmithing, gold wire craft, plus regular fossicking trips around the country.

Paul quickly discovered there were way too many beautiful things to collect and realised he needed to specialise:

“The world is too big a place to get specimens from everywhere. I’m not going to get caught like that. I’ll just stick to something that people can easily collect themselves and make into jewellery.”

He took a particular shine to agates as the perfect collector’s items because “no two are ever the same – each one is unique.” Over a period of thirty-three years, Paul made a total of twenty-four fossicking trips to Agate Creek often in the company of his wife Marie or his good friend Brian Jones, a retired wood turner from New Zealand. Paul’s ever-faithful Volkswagen Type 4 wagon, fitted with an oversize air-cooled boxer engine, clocked up a total of 540,000km on these regular fossicking trips, towing a 6ft (1.8m) by 4ft (1.2m) fold out camping trailer and carrying tonnes of rough agate back home. Paul even took a 14in (35cm) diamond saw with him to cut the agates in the field and select which ones to collect.

The biggest agate Paul found on the field was the size of a twenty litre jerry can and much too heavy to carry. He discovered it in the creek and had to pay a large muscly man at safari camp fifty pounds to carry the stone.

Paul later realised that not enough research had been carried out on Agate Creek, with agates being considered as “just common ornamental silica of relatively low value” by the geological and gemmological community. He set up his own laboratory for the documentation, photography and study of this unique Australian deposit which produces “agates of varying colour and patterns and of exquisite beauty, no two of which are ever alike.”

Paul travelled widely throughout his life with some of his fondest memories being driver of the tour bus for groups of rock hounds visiting Tucson Show and teaching wire-wrap jewellery classes in the United States. To all those who have ever known him, Paul has always been a larger-than-life character: quick to tell a story, sing a song, or tell a joke.

A favourite story is how he was knighted as Sir Paul after he met Prince Leonard in Western Australia. Leonard Casley proclaimed secession from Australia on 21 April 1970 and formed his own kingdom following an argument with the Western Australian government over wheat quotas. He turned his property into a separate nation known as the Hutt River Province, with one big bonus being that tourists from around the world flocked there to have their passports stamped and to collect Hutt River coins and stamps!

Apparently, a gallant Paul, who was travelling through the area, saw Prince Leonard’s wife, Her Royal Highness Princess Shirley, trying to start the lawnmower. Always the gentleman, Paul immediately stopped to help, and then continued mowing the lawn on her behalf; for this act of kindness and chivalry he was brought before the Prince.

Paul was made a Knight of the Royal Order in an official ceremony and became Sir Paul (Libraries Australia Authorities Record ID 36751407 www.librariesasutralia.nla.gov.au) with his wife becoming Lady Marie.

Although Paul plans to live to a ripe old age of well over 100 years, he has laid plans for a well-attended funeral when that time comes. He has selected 100 smaller polished agates from his collection and has them ready in a big bucket from which his mourners will each be able to choose one as thanks for attending (Figure 7)!

Reference

La Mont, D., 1969. Australian Lapidary Journal, November 1969, p.18.

Bibliography

Bartley, N., 1892. Opals and Agates, Gordon and Gotch, Brisbane.

Howard, P., 1996. Agate Creek agate. The Australian Gemmologist, 19(5), pp.215-220.

Howard, P., 1997. Inclusions in agates and chalcedonies. The Australian Gemmologist, 19(11), pp.464-465.

Howard, P., 1998. Alaskan Jade. The Australian Gemmologist, 20(4), pp.149-153.

Howard, P., 1999. Agates from the inside out. Metal Stone & Glass Magazine, 8, pp.16-17 and pp.24-25.

Howard P., 2002. Fossicking for Agate in Australia. Metal Stone & Glass Magazine, 17, pp.27-29.

Howard, P., 2002. Agate Creek agates. The Australian Gemmologist, 21(8), pp.299-300.

Photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise stated.