Where Agates Can be Found in New Zealand

NOTE: 3 July 2019 – The mineralworld website referred below is no longer available currently on the internet. I have therefore included in square brackets below access to this material via the Internet Archive, as it existed in 2016-2017.

Mineralworld [see archive] is a website developed by Klaus Schäfer, [see archive], a German gemstone expert and jewellery-designer, who has done a lot of research and writing about gemstones, especially agates and jasper. He refers to his site as an “agate-almanac” – it is all about agates. An agate can be described technically as a translucent cryptocrystalline variety of quartz, a variegated chalcedony, characterised by colours in alternating stripes or bands, in irregular clouds, or in moss-like forms. Agates may have a wide variety of colour patterns and banding, with the many distinctive styles and patterns virtually making each agate unique. 

There are many pages on Klaus Schäfer’s website about agates worldwide, with a multitude of excellent and beautiful photos from a wide range of collections. Some of the information and articles are in German but there is much English material there as well.

Part of the website is called “Agates Worldwide” and has detailed descriptions of thousands of places where agates can be found. One page is the Index to the New Zealand material [see archive] where 28 locations are listed (such as Birdlings Flat, Hinds River, Nimmo’s Swamp, and Ward’s Beach). Click on a location and you are taken to a page with a description of the location and the agates that have been found there (usually written by NZ experts), illustrated with exquisite agate photos [NOTE: The Internet Archive very unfortunately did not archive these photos, but some agate photos can be found elsewhere on the archived site – click here for examples], four of which are below. The localities of origin of the agates in these photos are, from left to right: Nimmo’s Swamp, near Moeraki in Otago; Rangiatea Station near Mt Somers, Canterbury – this photo is by Malcolm Luxton who has recently published a book on “Agates of New Zealand” (see my comments on Luxton’s book in the section on Stone 11 in “Twelve Stones, Part Four“); Whitecliffs clay pit in Canterbury; and Gawler Downs Station near Mt Somers, Canterbury.

These agates were large enough to slice through so that their banding and internal patterns are shown to best effect. If agates are too small for this, they can be tumble polished like other small stones.

Regarding agates on TumbleStone, see also the following Posts: A) My Visit to Birdlings Flat, Day 2: Gemstone and Fossil Museum; B) Another Visit to Birdlings Flat, Late June 2016 – Part Three: Seven Types of Stones Collected; C) Polishing Agates from Birdlings Flat: Stage One; D) Stone #11 in Twelve Stones, Part Four; E) Milestone #6 in Nine Milestones at Journey’s End; F) The May page in TumbleStone Calendar 2019 – February, March, April and May; and G) Stay-at-Home Day Twenty-Six, Monday 20 April 2020: Stone Twenty-Six. 

Author: tumblestoneblog

Retired Academic, male, living in the New Zealand countryside near Whanganui with his wife as well as Jasper the dog, Fluffy the cat, Dancer and Penny, the horses, and a shed half-full of stones. Email john.tumblestone@gmail.com. View all posts by tumblestoneblog