A Blog About Stone Gathering, Tumbling and Polishing, and Rocks and Landscapes, from New Zealand – With Musical Interludes (john.tumblestone@gmail.com)
Look at the stars Look how they shine for you And everything you do Yeah they were all yellow
I came along I wrote a song for you And all the things you do And it was called “Yellow”
So then I took my turn Oh what a thing to have done And it was all yellow
Your skin Oh yeah, your skin and bones Turn into something beautiful You know, you know I love you so You know I love you so
I swam across I jumped across for you Oh what a thing to do ‘Cause you were all yellow
I drew a line I drew a line for you Oh what a thing to do And it was all yellow
Your skin Oh yeah your skin and bones Turn into something beautiful And you know For you I’d bleed myself dry For you I’d bleed myself dry
It’s true Look how they shine for you Look how they shine for you Look how they shine for Look how they shine for you Look how they shine for you Look how they shine
Look at the stars Look how they shine for you And all the things that you do
How much of a stone is worn away during any stage of the tumbling process is of course dependent on a number of factors. The three major ones are the hardness of the stone, the size of the grit/abrasive used, and the length of tumbling time.
Most of the books on stone tumbling don’t comment on this issue, though Del Fairfield in “Lapidary” (a “Teach Yourself Book” published by St Paul’s House, London, in 1973) mentions that seven days tumbling in grade 80 grit leads to “about a 5 per cent reduction” in weight (page 15).
I recently decided to pay some attention to this question so I purchased a small set of digital scales. I have done the calculations for two batches of stones so far.
The batch of Riverton Back Beach stones after tumbling in 100 grit for 6 3/4 days.
The batch of Birdlings Flat stones after tumbling in 220 grit for 5 1/2 days.
For a batch of Riverton Back Beach stones that went into a 4lb barrel and were tumbled for 6 3/4 days with 7 tablespoons of 100 grit: Starting weight of stones = 1620 grams; End weight of stones = 1424 grams. This means that 196 grams of the stones were worn away from them, which is just over 12% of their weight.
For a batch of Birdlings Flat stones that went into a 3lb barrel and were tumbled for 5 1/2 days (there was a loss of electricity which shortened the normal one week’s tumbling time) with 4 tablespoons of 220 grit: Starting weight of stones = 862 grams; End weight of stones = 820 grams. This means that 42 grams of the stones were worn away from them, which is just under 5% of their weight.
Yesterday I visited a beach just south of the Hokitika River mouth on the West Coast of the South Island. It was raining and cold, a south-west wind blowing in over the sea. This is a beach where the sea is advancing, where the land is being eaten away when the tides are high and the weather stormy. Access is by a road that heads towards the local golf course – a vehicle-track then turns off just past the bridge over the Mahinapua Creek. The track ends abruptly at the coast – the stretch that runs parallel to the sea is being washed away.
I walked along the beach, finding plenty of stones scattered across the sand, amongst the driftwood and remnants of flax roots. There are places where drifts of stones stretch down into the surf. The owner of the Annabelle Motel, where I was staying in Hokitika, told me this is one of the beaches where the people who make stone mats collect their raw materials.
The outstanding stone on this beach is white quartz. This type of stone is common in many places in the South Island and I found many varieties of it here. Some seem banded, some have inclusions of colour, some are pure white.
Looking northwards to Hokitika
Looking up the Mahinapua Creek
The Mahinapua Creek joining the Hokitika River right at its mouth
Paradoxically, stones are in stars and stars are in stones. In his book The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History (2010), British geologist Jan Zalasiewicz tells the story of a pebble’s history, stretching back billions of years. In Chapter One, “Stardust”, he points out how, at the atomic level, a pebble is a microcosm of the Universe, made up of that which goes back to the singularity of the beginnings of everything:
The pebble, in this respect, is as deep a mystery as is everything else in the Universe. How did the matter of that pebble, and of the…hills it was torn from, and of the world it sits atop – and of the Solar System and of the Milky Way, and of countless galaxies near and far – manage to unpack itself from a point: a ‘singularity’, as many think, of no size at all? (page 7)
A pebble is made of stardust and in it we encounter not only the depths of the Earth but also the heights of the heavens. Looking down is a way of looking up. Looking into a stone is also to glance across deep dark space and even time. In a stone we make contact with that which is closest to home as well as that which is furthest away.
“Making Contact” by Bruce Cockburn
Step outside, take a look at the stars Catch a glimpse of the way things are Making contact…
Smell of sweet fresh oil on skin When you move on me like the tide coming in Making contact…
So many ways to understand One for every woman and man Been that way since the world began
I hear the drumming of the surf and I have to dance Stepping to the rhythm of circumstance Making contact…
I feel so huge, I feel so small I feel so good I want to swallow it all Making contact…
Making contact Swimming in an ocean of love We move together like the waves Swimming in an ocean of love Every night and every day Swimming in an ocean of love One world, one human race Swimming in an ocean of love One kiss from a smiling face Swimming in an ocean of love See that sign coming into view Swimming in an ocean of love Mother sea welcomes you Swimming in an ocean of love Making contact…
Orepuki is a small town near a beach right at the bottom of the South Island. It is often mentioned as a good place to find interesting stones. I visited there in February and April this year and brought home some stones for polishing. These photos are of my first batch of Orepuki stones just out of a 4lb barrel where they had been tumbled for a week in 100 mesh silicon carbide grit. I am just about to inspect each one to decide what should be done with it next.
I once wrote the following in an article for a Smallfarmers magazine. It was entitled “The Passions and Emotions of Smallfarming: Place, Experience and Meaning”:
I was brought up on a large sheep farm in Southland. It was called “The Mains”, a Scottish term for the farm headquarters. My country childhood involved expeditions to every part – sheds, stables, pasture, river, pond, old railway line, shelter belts, pine tree plantations. I could be cowboy, farmer, hunter, explorer. I spent a lot of time fishing for trout in the river, building tree huts, hunting for rats and rabbits with Lassie, my fox terrier, riding horses, swimming in the river in summer, sledding down the snowy hillslopes in winter, often getting away from everything and enjoying being alone in my favourite grove of old gnarled pine trees or nestled down amongst the high grass not yet cut for hay. In autumn I gathered pine cones to sell to the “townies” to supplement my pocket money…I later bought Waikoha Smallfarm in the Waikato largely out of nostalgia for that long ago childhood – I had lived in cities for the previous three decades. There are many layers to the emotional meaning of my smallfarm, but one of the most basic involves a harkening back to my younger days… A smallfarm as a whole is emotionally-loaded to its owners. A smallfarm provides emotional comfort, independence and security. It enables a rural lifestyle characterised by peace and quiet, space, privacy, freedom and self-expression.
These photos (below) are of the Waikaka River running through “The Mains”, the farm I grew up on. I visited there on a stone-collection trip in April 2016. Gold mining dredges were active there in the late 19th century and again just recently – it is an area of inland alluvial gravel-beds.
“Beside You” by Dave Dobbyn
Here’s to your garden, here’s to your kids I heard you were in the neighbourhood I’ve been a long time on the skids And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river When it long ran over you
This is for you standing up to a bone-chilling wind This is for the failures you collected from my sin And this is for your lonesome tears I never dried This is for you hanging in in the hope that it never dies And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river When it long ran over you
This is for you waiting up though the call never came For the milk of human kindnesses you collected from our dream And this is for your lonesome tears I never dried This is for you hanging in in the hope that it never died And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river When it long ran over you
And now I’m running here beside you And now I’m running here beside you
This is for the traveller on a blinding desert road Good fortune smile upon you and may love be your only load And this is for the only one who could quell my burning rage To anyone whose been a broken man and anyone seen better days
Baby I’m beside you And now I’m running here beside you And now I’m running here beside you
Windstar Aotearoa Land of the long white cloud Windstar Aotearoa Let’s teach our children proud
We need to do more with what we have And we can be more with who we are And to feel the wind blowing upon our souls And to reach out and touch a star
Windstar Aotearoa Go forth and let your spirit free Windstar Aotearoa Held build a world of love for you or me
Hey let’s live a dream of being whole again And fly with the hawks and touch the clouds With spirit’s music played on instruments of nature To live in harmony and he oh so proud
We can believe in hope, hey let’s believe in our dreams You see, the rose you hold becomes a means Each of us will build before our time has flown A stumbling block or a stepping stone
Windstar Aotearoa Land of the long white cloud Windstar Aotearoa Land of the long white cloud
“I heard the boom of a kakapo, the sound of a takahe shrill, as the sun crept over the eastern ridges and warmed the morning hills…” The song begins by referring to two amazing birds. The first, the kakapo, is unique – a flightless parrot, the world’s heaviest parrot, maybe the longest living bird, which is also nocturnal. The male kakapo produces a low-frequency “boom” to attract potential mates, a quiet call to our ears but it can be heard by another kakapo up to 5 kilometres away. With only about 125 individuals known to exist, the kakapo is critically endangered.
The second bird featuring at the start of John Grenell’s song is the takahe – another large flightless bird, but thought to have been extinct at the beginning of the 19th century. A small population was discovered in 1948 in the isolated Murchison Mountains in southern New Zealand. Still a critically endangered species, ongoing conservation efforts mean that a population of maybe a couple of hundred exists. These two takahe (below) reside at Te Anau in Southland, and I visited them in February 2016 on my way to the beaches of the Southland coast.
John Grenell “Song of Southland”
I heard the boom of a kakapo, the sound of a takahe shrill as the sun crept over the eastern ridges and warmed the morning hills I heard the sound of a station hound as it wakens to the day I once followed the farm dog’s dreams as I wandered on my way
Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu memory Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu mountain memory Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me
She loved the sound of the banjo ring and she loved those mandolin tunes As I recall she loved them all beneath the Monowai moon She loved the soft and the easy wind as it whispred through the hill And I like to think that if I go back again that she’d maybe love me still
Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu memory Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu mountain memory Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me
The times they come and the times they go, you win sometimes you lose Hey I love my living in every breath and how I love to sing the blues When I hear a bellbird’s call, my heart jumps in a whirl It reminds me of some times I spent with a Mararoa River girl
Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu memory Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu mountain memory Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me
