LOCAL lapidarists LiMing and Detlef Schmidt have been collecting gems and colourful stones for years, which now Ms Schmidt has begun turning into jewellery to sell at local community markets.
Ms Schmidt said she’s loved jewellery and gemstones since her youth and taught herself to wire wrap so that she could turn collected stones into wearable jewellery.
“I grew up loving beautiful things and bought jewellery from a young age,” she said.
“I wanted to learn to make things so I didn’t have to keep buying them. The wire wrapping I learned from YouTube. I ended up having too much, so I started to sell them at the markets.”
Mr Schmidt has been collecting minerals for many years, since before the two met.
Ms Schmidt said when they were packing up his house she was thrilled to see a whole box of agate gemstones.
“He was a part of the Mineral Club and he said don’t join, just come have a look first,” she said.
“And I went and he saw how excited and happy I was, and he signed me up. I spoke to the lady at the end of the day and asked if I could join and she said your husband has already paid for you to join!”
The pair fossick with the Mineral Club for gemstones every month or so, and have set up a workshop in their backyard to cut stones from slabs down to size and reshape them into pieces for jewellery.
With no option for fossicking in China, Ms Schmidt said she’s thrilled to be able to find and use local gemstones for her handmade jewellery in the Far West region.
The Schmidts relocated from Victoria to Broken Hill during COVID, after living in a caravan for almost a year.
“We sold our house and had been planning to travel around Australia for about 12 months, have a look to work out where we would settle on living next,” Mr Schmidt said.
“But then lockdown happened. We still had the block of land next door to our house which we’d sold, so we were stuck in our caravan with no power or water.”
Eventually when the borders opened, they travelled to South Australia to visit a few regional towns, knowing they wanted to live outside of a major city.
“We passed through Broken Hill and two weeks later I said, I want to go back to Broken Hill and look for a house,” Ms Schmidt said
Mr Schmidt added: “It was the typical ugliest house on the street”.
The pair have spent time renovating, and plan to stay and retire here.
Their jewellery is available for purchase at the monthly community markets or at the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum.
