The Australian sapphire industry is preparing a new, assertive strategy to establish its own reputation in the world gemstone market - a reflection of Australia's growing maturity as a producer of international quality.

Heiress apparent to her effervescent sister the diamond, sapphire has a mysterious, almost mythological attraction - drawing the eye in to their rich iridescent centres, they entice with a promise of hypnotic discovery. We know the diamond well, her sheer blinding brilliance is familiar to the many who have wooed her, but we hover uncertainly two steps away from the enigmatic sapphire, hesitantly awaiting an introduction to this dark lunar lady.

Sapphire has enjoyed multifarious often strangely incongruous uses throughout her history; form being crushed and powdered as medicine, acting as an auspicious business card for the benefit of wealthy French noblemen, to an exotic elixir administered to less than amourous lovers. Sapphire has lived for many years in relative obscurity far away from notoriety in the outback mines of rural Australia. Few would be aware that some of the world's most shining examples of sapphire have been leaving the enclaves of the wide brown land to be sold on the world markets as anything but prize Australian yield. It is not surprising then that Australia herself has been slow to recognise the potential gains of an indigenous sapphire industry.