All this is what the couple love about being lapidaries. Wherever they travel, they always return with rocks.

Searching for gemstones is like looking for hidden treasure without a map, having to rely on an ability to read the rock formations and environmental factors, according to the couple.

"You have to have knowledge and dig in the right place," Mr Hopgood said.

However, ultimately, there is a large element of chance.

"It's sort of like a poker machine," Ms Hopgood said. "It's luck of the draw. You might hit the jackpot.

"You could be centimetres away from something beautiful."

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BBLC meet monthly to cut, polish and collect stones, however members frequently travel on fossicking trips around the world in search of the precious gemstones they can work with. Mr and Ms Hopgood travel to major gem shows around Australia, meeting others and sharing information about possible digging locations.

Mr Hapgood joined BBLC when it formed in 1985, but he was chasing rocks for years before the club formed.

Ms Hapgood found a chunk of quartz on Rosedale Beach while holidaying from Sydney as a child, and still remembers the euphoria of the find.

She was drawn to the Lapidary Club because she loves "travelling places, camping with people, digging holes and finding things".

However she said she doesn't have the patience for the shaping and polishing.

"I just dig and give it to him and say 'make something out of it'," she said.

When a suitable rock is found, Mr Hopgood said the possibilities were endless - like the types of rocks that could be found.

"If you just made up a name and just said it... it's probably the name of a rock," he said.

The machines BBLC stores in their makeshift home at Batemans Bay Museum - their shed at Mogo Goldfields was destroyed by the fires - are able to shape, polish and mould rocks in numerous ways. The most basic process is cutting a cabochon, which all members quickly learn to do.

Mr Hapgood has made a die out of rhodonite from Inverell, a miniature Japanese samurai sword from New Zealand jade, many perfume bottles out of all different minerals, and is currently working on a functioning water well.

One of the most precious treasures the couple have collected was fossilised fern from the Lune River in Tasmania.

"We get into places the average person will never see," Mr Hapgood said.