Month: June 2019

The “Elusive Sapphire” of Gemstone Beach

The brief information provided by local tourist sites on the types of stones that can be found on Gemstone Beach often mentions sapphires. “Part of Te Waewae Bay, Gemstone Beach is a popular destination for rock hunters and visitors interested in geology, ‘gems’ (including sapphires) are known to be found” (Riverton website). “A few hours beachcombing could easily yield gems such as hydrogrossular, jasper, fossil worm casts and the elusive sapphire” (Heritage Trail website). I’ve been aware for some time of this view that sapphires could be found on Gemstone Beach. But in my many visits there, they have always been truly elusive to me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. And would I know one if if I did? What do they look like? How rare are they? Has anyone actually found one?

Then last year my sister from Gore showed me a newspaper cutting. It was a short piece on Gemstone Beach by columnist Lloyd Esler in the “Southland Times” in March 2018 which also included a photograph of two sapphires from the Beach (see photo at top of this Post, far left hand side). Esler wrote: “The best known of the ‘gemstones’ are grossular garnets which are distinguished by their gloss and weight, and sapphires with their characteristic colour and extreme hardness… The nearest thing to a ‘precious’ stone from the beach is a sapphire but these ones are not gem quality.” The Riverton Museum Te Hikoi also has three small stones labelled “Sapphire” in its display of stones that can be found on Gemstone Beach (see photo at top, second from left). And the photo at the top of this Post, second from right, is a photo of an “Orepuki sapphire” from the Flickr page of the Otago Rock and Mineral Club. It is accompanied by the following description: “The blue colour is sapphire which is combined within the structure of a hydrogrossular garnet”. The photo at top, far right, is is an example of a cut precious gem sapphire, but a lot of naturally occurring sapphire is nowhere near such quality.

The New Zealand geologist Jocelyn Thornton produced an excellent booklet “Gemstones” (1985), now freely available online.  It has a page on “Beryl, tourmaline, corundum (ruby and sapphire)”. Two samples of sapphire are photographed: “Rare blue sapphire occurs with the tourmaline at Richmond Flat… Even rarer are waterworn pebbles found on the beach on at Orepuki in Southland. Their source is unknown.” She includes a photo of an Orepuki sapphire (circled on the photo at far left below). In her book, “The Field Guide to New Zealand Geology” (2003), Thornton refers to the blue corundum at Richmond Flat in Nelson as “dull” and “extremely rare” (page 49). She also notes that “ruby rock” or Goodletite, found only in a small area near Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island, sometimes contains tiny crystals of “bluish sapphire” (page 70). Below, second from left, is a map of Goodletite distribution from a 1996 article in the “Journal of Petrology” by R. Grapes and K. Palmer (“Ruby-sapphire-chromium-mica-tourmaline rocks from Westland, New Zealand“) and below, second from right, is a photo of Goodletite from Mindat.org. The rock is named after William Goodlet, who recognised it as an unusual stone when visiting the Rimu gold workings in 1892. (Mindat.org states that Goodletite has also been found at “the Mont D’Or Mine at Ross, Olderog Creek, Whitcombe Valley, and the Taipo River”.) The photo on the far right below is a slice of Goodletite made into jewelry.

What is sapphire? Sapphire is a variety of corundum (see photos below, the two to the left), which is a crystalline form of natural aluminium oxide (Al2O3) (a metamorphic variant of bauxite) and its purest colourless form is very rare. Composed of only aluminium and oxygen, it requires a growth environment free of silica to form. It was not until the 18th century that it was clearly established that sapphires and rubies are the same mineral. As Gemporia points out, various trace elements that enter the corundum during its formation produce all the exquisite and unique varieties of sapphire. Blue sapphire is coloured by the presence of titanium and iron, for example, and it is the balance of these impurities within the stone that causes such a wide range of blue tones, from bright, clear cornflower blues to deep dark midnight blues. Titanium and iron need make up only a few hundredths of one per cent of the corundum to make a typical blue sapphire. As Lin Sutherland in “Gemstones of the Southern Continents” (1991) notes, when these two elements replace aluminium atoms and sit side by side, they share their electric charges. “This energy state absorbs a broad band of the light, leaving only blue and violet blue. If the two elements sit slightly further apart, the absorption changes and lets through blue-green” (page 105). Iron alone can lead to yellow and green colours, orange hues need iron and chromium, and vanadium causes purple hues. The photo on the far right below, from Sutherland’s “Gemstones of the Southern Continents” (1991), illustrates the wide variety of coloured sapphires from one area in New South Wales. 

Sutherland observes: “When chromium exceeds about 1 per cent in the mineral, atoms of this large and heavy element start to strongly absorb the shorter wavelengths of light. So red becomes the dominant colour. This earns the mineral [corundum] a new variety name, ruby” (page 44). Two photos of natural ruby crystals are below, left and middle, with a cut gem of ruby to the right.

Minerals.net states that Corundum is a very hard, tough, and stable mineral. For all practical purposes, it is the hardest mineral after diamond, making it the second hardest mineral with a rating on the Mohs scale of 9 out of 10. It is also unaffected by acids and most environments. Gem quality corundum is found in streams as its high density causes pieces to deposit within one local region and its hardness makes it resistant to weathering (Minerals Education Coalition). Non-gem corundum material is used as an abrasive because of its high hardness. 

During my last visit to Gemstone Beach, in mid-June 2019, I met up with a fellow stone collector on the way back to the car park. He turned out to be Jack Geerlings from Winton. I had heard of him earlier this year when I had seen some of his polished stones for sale at the Good Studio, an art and gift gallery in Riverton (photo below). Jack has been ill and was on his first trip to Gemstone Beach for some weeks when I came across him. I was interested to hear about his work and we chatted for a while. Jack mentioned he had once found a nice sapphire on Gemstone Beach, after a small landslide had brought down part of the cliff there. He kindly asked if I would like to visit him and see his stones and workshop, and I jumped at the opportunity. I drove up to Winton two days later. Jack showed me his extensive collection of stones and his workshop. Right at the beginning, I asked to see his sapphire (3rd and 4th photos below) and he showed me two other small ones he had collected as well (5th and 6th photos below).

One of the things Jack talked about was the Rock Clubs he had been associated with. He has been actively involved with the Otago Rock and Mineral Club, for example, and it now seems to me that it is his large sapphire stone that is in the photograph on the Otago Rock and Mineral Club Flickr page. Jack was very generous with his time and shared the stories behind many of his stones. He allowed me to take photos of his large and diverse stone collection, which includes many agates and a lot of petrified wood.

As a result of seeing and handling Jack’s fine sapphire stone, I now stand a better chance of recognising one should I stumble across it on Gemstone Beach in the future. However, “rare” and “elusive” are likely to remain its key characteristics.

UPDATE ONE: February 2024 – While fossicking on Gemstone Beach with Chrissy Lampitt, we met with a fellow rockhound who showed us a sapphire he had very recently found – see “Early 2024 Fossicking Trip – Part 3, First Gemstone Beach Fossick (With View of a Sapphire), Saturday 17 February”. I recognised it immediately, based on Jack’s specimens. Chrissy took a photo (see first two photos below). I had reconciled myself to never finding one, and even had doubts whether they really existed, but this random encounter that day has reassured me of the presence of this type of sapphire along this coast. And then, a couple of days later, I bought a book from the Riverton Aparima Museum shop – Lloyd Esler’s “West to the Waiau”, published in 2023. On page 14 is a photo of “A sapphire from Gemstone Beach” (see photo below, far right).  

UPDATE TWO: August 2025 – Corina, a Gemstone Beach local, showed me some sapphires she had found. See “Four Finds of a Gemstone Beach Local: Including a Small Blue Sapphire and a Large Black Hydrogrossular Garnet”. Corina is the person who also found and donated the three sapphires in Te Hikoi, the Riverton Aparima Museum.

One side of the sapphire, dry.

 

16 Gems – Stones for Poetry

In People and Places, Poems and Stones: Kay McKenzie Cooke and Orepuki, I introduced the poet, Kay McKenzie Cooke, and discussed her links to her childhood home, Orepuki. I noted how stones from Gemstone Beach have figured in her life and poems. I thoroughly enjoyed reading her latest book of poems, Born To A Red-Headed Woman, so much so that I offered Kay some polished Gemstone Beach stones to acknowledge my enjoyment. And because I knew she would really appreciate and value them. 

16 polished stones from Gemstone Beach
Kay reading poetry at the Orepuki Beach Cafe, 2015. Source: http://whistlestoptours.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-march-2015-saw-j-and-k-rolling.html

I wanted to include a fossil worm cast stone and a hydrogrossular garnet and a banded rhyolite. I picked out a few more recently polished ones for consideration as well. In preparation for sending the stones in the mail to Kay, I photographed them and started to number them so I could include a description of them, outlining what kind of stone each one is (if I know).  I then thought about a more creative way of identifying each stone – why not link them to the lines of the poems in her book? This process resulted in 16 stones being chosen and named. As I said to Kay in an email at the time, “The stones I had polished and the poems you had written proved a very fertile ground for linkages. I really enjoyed working through the ideas, it was not at all a hard thing to do. It was interesting how much colours are used in your poems. And the colours often carry the emotional dimensions which are deep.”

The following is what I sent to Kay – lines from her poems in Born To A Red-Headed Woman are in green, with page numbers. Her poems are autobiographical and chronological, starting with her birth, going through her childhood, high school, and on into adulthood, motherhood, and being a grandmother. The sequence of stones follow the sequence of this life journey. Each poem is named after a song or lyric associated with that time or relevant to its theme.

Sometimes, below, the meaning of just a couple of lines from a poem may not be clear – you’ll have to buy the book! 

**********

TumbleStone Reflections on “Born to a Red-Headed Woman: Poems by Kay McKenzie Cooke” (Otago University Press, 2014)

Sixteen Polished Stones from Gemstone Beach

Stone 1, “Moonlight”: Whiteish-yellowish-orangeish quartz stone the size of a small walnut, brought down the Waiau River and cast upon the beach on the coast

don’t let the moon break your heart

I was born in winter
to a red-headed woman
who shivered on a hard bed
under one thin blanket
in a hospital by the Waiau River
making heavy work

of its final punch through
to the coast,
the thrum of its waters
underscoring our breathing,
the beating of my heart
the size of a walnut.
(page 12)

Stone 2, “Misty”: Translucent hydrogrossular garnet, like the mist made by fingertips

The teacher draws close,
her own fingers cool,

narrow, streamlined
dragonflies that touch down
briefly where my fingertips
have begun to make mist,
What lovely moons you have, she says.
(page 15)

Stone 3, “Near Light”: Dark and light banded mudstone, the night and the light

On the night of our send-off
oblivious to what I was leaving behind:
the near light of Te Waewae Bay
(page 18)

Stone 4, “White Dresses”: Dark red stone (jasper?) with a pattern of white speckles (quartz?)

At the Riversdale Girl Guides
we practised
Scottish Country Dancing…

…we rehearsed
reels in white dresses
with tartan sashes…
(page 22)

Stone 5, “Sago Pudding”: White quartz

…Dad singing, Pass the biscuits, Miranda
as all nine of us ate mashed spuds
and Mum’s mince stew with carrots,
followed by sago pudding
(page 23)

Stone 6, “Green Sea”: Green mudstone with dark green bands

…I dip below the ridge
to follow the crack of an old creek-bed
and all around nothing but green, green.
Green. A sea of green.
(page 24)

Stone 7, “Loneliness”: Grey marble-like stone, with dark staining on one side

Released the year and month my father died,
‘Wichita Lineman’ can still bring me the valley
where we lived,
still bring me grief, the sound

of wind through wire, the loneliness
of country verges
(page 32)

Stone 8, “Wild Green”: Green quartzite stone

We’d cut through the Gardens,
where the caged kea was kept…
its keening call sounding
as if it expressed the same ache
we felt
of sudden transplantation
from wild green.
(pages 36-37)

Stone 9, “Flat”: A flat stone, igneous porphyry with light-coloured crystals

Inside a stone flat in Dunedin…
is where I gave up butter
and coal-range heat…
(page 40)

Stone 10, “Sorrow’s Green Depths”: Blue-green stone with small pink spots

The sound of a snip.
And it is done.

and sometimes there will be sorrow

Sunday in Hedgehope
in a wooden house
with a front verandah,
in the depths
of Southland’s green.
(page 43)

Stone 11, “Ancestors”: Green argillaceous mudstone containing fossil worm casts

We saw Loch Ness and travelled in sunshine
up the Great Glen. That day we were riding
the land our ancestors walked.
(page 49)

Stone 12, “Worlds”: Small grainy white and black schist stone

We wore out what was left
before middle-age, being there
for both the fragile and the strong.
Every night remnants
from the sandpit, tiny grains of sand,
whole worlds,
carried home between our toes.
(page 51)

Stone 13, “Budgie”: Whitish greenish stone with clear patches, hints of yellow and black specks

Sometimes all it is
is being on holiday stuck in a car together…
Sometimes, it’s the wind slamming a door
shut. Sometimes it’s the day the budgie dies
or the way the passage smells when it rains.
(page 54)
 
Stone 14, “Lara’s Theme”: Small delicate quartzite stone, with clear silica bands

Before giving her up for adoption,
I’d called my baby daughter Lara…
…We love telling people
the surprise ending.
(page 56)

Stone 15, “Black-Faced”: Predominantly black crescent-shaped stone, with faint light patterning

Tomorrow
our son will take us into country so deep
we can only stand on the brink

looking up at that black-faced bluff
where the helicopter he was in crashed
and thank God that he survived.
(page 61)

Stone 16, “Space”: Banded rhyolite

it feels new
(for my grandchildren)

I look hard into your eyes,
see earth around a seed,
sea around an island,
space around a star.
(page 70)

**********

Kay’s response can be found in a Post called “Gems” in her own blog “Cuttings”. I have also used Kay’s poetry in the Post Green and Black: Green Stones and Mary Black’s “The Moon and Saint Christopher”.

People and Places, Poems and Stones: Kay McKenzie Cooke and Orepuki

Kay reading poetry at the Orepuki Beach Cafe, 2015. Source: http://whistlestoptours.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-march-2015-saw-j-and-k-rolling.html
Kay’s photo of Taunoa Stream, Gemstone Beach. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2019/05/09/charmed-place

A few weeks ago, on an aeroplane, I read Kay McKenzie Cooke’s book of autobiographical poems, Born To A Red-Headed Woman (2014). I was flying south, on my way via Invercargill, Gore and Riverton to Orepuki, the place where she grew up. I read all the poems at one sitting, and was transported in space and time beyond that morning’s plane journey to my own past and to the places that we unknowingly shared many years ago – the beaches of the southern coast, parts of rural Southland, the town of Gore and its high school, the big city of Dunedin. Kay lived in Orepuki for only ten years, but I understand the deep feelings she has for that place and how it remains strongly influential in her life and poetry. I grew up on “The Mains”, a farm just outside of Waikaka, leaving there when I went to university. I still think of it as “home”, and many parts of that farm are clear images in my head and still have strong emotional meanings for me. I have come to know Orepuki as the town near to Gemstone Beach, a place where I collect magnificent little stones, but seeing it through Kay’s eyes adds significant depth and meaning. 

I used to write a column for “The Smallfarmer” magazine, about 17 or 18 years ago. One of my articles was titled “The Passions and Emotions of Smallfarming: Place, Experience and Meaning”. I started it with this comment: “Geographers have argued for some time that a place is not simply the sum of its physical and biological components. Rather, places are peopled, and have significance to people in a wide variety of ways. Places are centres of meaning constructed by experience… They have emotional value and meaning to us.” I argued that different parts of a smallfarm (or of any place, in fact) can have different emotional meanings at different times to people, and these intensify or even change as the years pass. Lived-in places have “emotional micro-regions”, small areas charged with emotions based on the experiences we have there. 

In that article, I explored different types of “emotional micro-regions”. There are areas associated with delight, with stimulation, or with joy, which are keenly felt positive emotions. Gemstone Beach, for example, is full of those experiences for me, where the discovery of a colourful or rare stone brings a surge of emotion. Such emotions have come to be associated with the preparations for any visit to that beach. Then there are regions of comfort, security, and relaxation, positive but more passive emotions. Sitting on the high bank of stones half-way through a stone collection expedition, eating a refreshing mandarin or bar of chocolate, or finally reaching the carpark and warmth of the car after nearly three hours on a cold and windy beach – these constitute such micro-regions. 

Gemstone Beach, a region of delight
The delight of a gorgeous Gemstone Beach stone, found by Sam, my great-nephew
The surprise and delight of finding a sought-after stone
A refreshing stop on the stone bank, safe from the waves
The view of Gemstone Beach while taking a refreshing break. This part of the beach becomes associated with this emotional experience.

Negative passive place emotions include boredom, dissatisfaction, and tedium. Gemstone Beach does not hold such areas for me. But I can imagine that someone accompanying me, who has no interest in stones and really wants to be somewhere else, would come to have that kind of emotional experience of that place. Finally, there are the places that may be associated with stress, anxiety, tension, and frustration, even sadness, fear and anger, the more keenly felt negative emotions. Crossing the swift-flowing Taunoa Stream, or walking eyes-down along the edge of the waves, have sometimes resulted in the discomfort of cold water in the gumboots. And the pounding of powerful waves on a stormy day, when I have a high bank of stones restricting my ability to elude a wave stronger than the previous one, can be an anxious experience. 

Drying out my gumboots on Gemstone Beach on a cold June day, 2019.
The discomfort of the wave washing in over your gumboots.
The anxiety of being so close to powerful waves breaking on Gemstone Beach.
The anxiety of being so close to a crumbling stone bank as the Waimeamea River seeps out through the stones

Emotional micro-regions are not fixed – they may last for only a short time, though the memory and subsequent association remains. And they often overlap – the same place can have both positive and negative associations related to a number of different events or visits that have occurred over the years. Gemstone Beach is an amalgam of emotional micro-regions built up from the experiences I have had there. 

Kay McKenzie Cooke was born in Tuatapere and grew up in Orepuki, a stone’s throw from Gemstone Beach. She was the oldest of the seven children in her family. Through her mother’s line, she is tangata whenua and of Scottish and English descent. Through her father’s line, she is of Scottish and Irish descent. She writes: “My maunga/mountain, the Takitimu range, my awa/river is the Waiau, Southland, my ancestor is Moitoitoi, the maraes I affiliate to are Waihopai, Aparima and Hokonui. My iwi is Kai Tahu, my hapu is Kati Mamoe.”

Kay McKenzie Cooke. Source: https://bellamysatfive.wordpress.com/the-poets/kay-mckenzie-cooke
The McKenzie farm at Orepuki, Princess Range in the background, Te Waewae Bay to the left. Source: https://bellamysatfive.wordpress.com/the-poets/kay-mckenzie-cooke
The view at Orepuki from where Kay used to live. Source: http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/2014/04/theres-life-in-old-girl-yet-orepuki.html
Otama Valley. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2018/08/05/waikaka-visit

When she was ten years old, Kay’s family moved to the Otama Valley, further north in Southland, 20 miles from Gore, where her father continued to work in farming. Five years later, Kay’s father died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. Her mother took Kay and her siblings to live in Gore. After four years as a pupil at the small, two-roomed, country school of Wendon, Kay attended Gore High School, probably just a year ahead of myself, although I did not know her. In the early 1970s, both of us went to Dunedin for further study,  Kay to attend Teacher’s College. She became an early childhood teacher, got married, and had children. In the early 1990s, she decided to take up writing seriously. Her poems have since been published in a number of journals and magazines. Her first book of poetry, Feeding the Dogs, was published by Otago University Press in 2002 and won the Jessie McKay Prize for Best First Book of Poetry. Her second book of poetry was Made For Weather (2007) and her third was Born To A Red-Headed Woman (2014).

A description of Feeding the Dogs from the publisher: “This bumper collection of 60 poems is autobiographical and in it Cooke writes about town, landscape, family and everyday life. ‘Feeding the Dogs’ is one of the poems in this book. There are other rural poems, such as ‘I love this farm so much I could pat it’, but Kay Cooke is equally at home writing a well-made poem about lawn bowlers in Queenstown, a family reunion, global warming or biotechnology. Cooke’s work is strong and confident. On top of that, she has a particular southern sensibility that is very appealing and recognizable. Cooke writes that her poems come from the ‘sense of isolation that I felt living on a farm in Otama Valley, with tussock-covered hills and no shops and bus trips to school’.”

One description of Made For Weather includes the following: “The poems contain an array of striking images, developed from Cooke’s exposure as a child and adolescent to the wind-whipped coastline of Orepuki, now a ghost town on the eastern fringe of Te WaewaeBay, near Fiordland. The passing of seasons features in the background of scenes which are dominated by ostensibly contemporary concerns such as a wild and woolly boyfriend, or collecting Toheroa. The poet has a gift for capturing people in day-to-day, incidental situations.”

The following comments by the publisher on Born To A Red-Headed Woman are an accurate description of that book: “Laconic, wry, subtly philosophical, Kay McKenzie Cooke’s new collection carries us from her rural Southland girlhood in the 1950s and 60s to the bitter pressures of adopting out her baby as a teenager in the 1970s, and to her present as grandmother, mother, wife and author. A plain-spoken honesty, a sensitivity to the natural world, a gentle humour, a deep sense of how the richness of our relationships lodges in ordinary rituals and routines: all combine in a quietly moving autobiography.” 

Kay’s first two books are out of print, but can sometimes be discovered in second-hand bookstores. You can buy Born To A Red-Headed Woman here.

Kay has two blogs, Cuttings and Time & Place. You can listen to Kay reading “Sacred Days”, a poem of images of her life as a high school student at Gore High School, a poem published in “Born to a Red-Headed Woman”: “I wrote the poem as a sixty-year old looking back into my own adolescence and its callow bewilderment. My very normal teenage confusion was compounded by the recent loss of my father who had died very suddenly of a heart attack when I was fifteen. His sudden disappearance from our lives had necessitated, for my mother, my six siblings and myself, an immediate removal from the freedom and familiarity of a rural home [at Orepuki] to the weird constrictions of life in a small town, living in a wooden villa with a mailbox on a street next to a lot of other wooden villas with mailboxes.” (Click here for more of Kay’s comments on the poem and here for the full text of the poem.)

Kay has lived in Dunedin for many years now, has retired from teaching,  and participates in and helps to organise Dunedin poetry readings. With Jenny Powell, she forms the poetry performance duo, “J&K Rolling”, taking poetry readings to out-of-the-way places and rural areas in New Zealand. Kay is available to visit schools as part of the Writers in Schools programme. She visited Waikaka School in 2018 as part of this. In February this year (2019), she read and discussed her poem, “some time”, at Knox College Chapel’s opening service – an excerpt from this poem is featured on a sculpture in the College quadrangle: “But this is home./ This place,/ where every season counts/ and under our feet,/ safe ground”. I note this because I was a student resident at Knox College in the early 1970s. In March 2018, Kay and Jenny Powell had a poetry stall at the Owaka Cavalcade Market and Family Entertainment Day.

Kay and Jenny outside Orepuki Cafe. Source: http://whistlestoptours.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-march-2015-saw-j-and-k-rolling.html
Kay McKenzie Cooke and Jenny Powell. Source: https://www.jennypowell.co.nz
Kay’s car parked alongside the school fence when she visited Waikaka school. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2018/08/05/waikaka-visit/
Excerpt from Kay’s poem, Knox College sculpture. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2019/03/11/one-fine-fine-day
Kay and Jenny’s Owaka Poetry Stall. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/blog-2/

Stones are part of Kay’s childhood memories of Orepuki, and she often visits the beach when she returns there. “I remember as a kid keeping on our bedroom window sill, jam jars full of water to keep my stash of gemstones bright and colourful – until an algae-green sludge smothered their attraction and I had to throw them out again, allowing the rain and air to keep them instead” (from a  2011 blog post).  Her father was born in Orepuki and “over his many years there – long before Gemstone Beach was famous or even called by that name – he, like all Orepuki kids, collected the coloured pebbles”. All of his stone collection then went into the wet cement of the concrete paths and steps he built around their house. Many years later, Kay managed to retrieve the two steps and take them to Dunedin. She comments in the same 2011 blog post:  “I love this tangible reminder I have of of my childhood home. I always feel close to my father (dead 43 years this Thursday) whenever I take time to sit on them and rub my palms over the smooth, rounded stones. To me they are gems not so much semi-precious, as fully-precious. Each one tells a story and recently I’ve been paying attention.” Her poem “living stone” contains the story of the steps, and three other poems were inspired by her father’s Orepuki stones, including “quiet life“. Other poems have been stone-fed, such as “a heart-shaped one“.

Orepuki beach stones in concrete steps, done by Kay’s father, rescued from her old Orepuki home. Source: http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/2011/10/stories-written-in-stone.html
Collected from Gemstone Beach by Kay and her son, April 2019. Source: http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/2019/04/now-that-family-have-left-our-shores-to.html
The wind-bent trees of Orepuki, another significant landscape feature. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2018/05/20/fine-balance/

It was a moving experience for me to read Kay’s poems, their power lying in our shared southern roots as well as her personal openness and perceptive insights about everyday life. The links to Orepuki and Gemstone Beach led me to offer Kay the gift of a few of my polished stones from Gemstone Beach, which she was delighted to receive. These stones are the subject of my next Post, 16 Gems – Stones for Poetry.

Awaruite: The Story of the Second Mineral Described From New Zealand

Awaruite is the second of 13 minerals that have been first described from New Zealand and accepted as valid by the International Mineralogical Association. The first was Taranakite, the subject of a previous Post. This Post tells the story of Awaruite.

Awaruite is a rare natural nickel-iron alloy (Ni3Fe – though web.mineral.com defines it as “Ni2Fe to Ni3Fe”) which was originally found in the early 1880s as water-worn grains in the Gorge River, South Westland. These grains were in two samples of heavy black sand “transmitted to the [government] laboratory through the Secretary for Mines, as having been obtained by some alluvial miners working near Jackson’s Bay, and given to them by the [District] Warden” (quoted from William Skey’s article of 1885). (According to George F. H. Ulrich in an 1890 article on the discovery and distribution of Awaruite, the Warden of the Jackson’s Bay District at the time was a Mr Macfarlane. Ulrich was the first Director of the Otago School of Mines.) The geological source of these grains was traced back to serpentinite rock in the nearby Cascade Valley. Awaruite has since been found in serpentinites elsewhere in the world. 

Awaruite from Gorge River, Westland. Source: https://www.mindat.org/photo-837390.html
Awaruite from Oregon. Source: http://rruff.info/repository/sample/by_minerals/Awaruite__R061020__Sample__Photo__13344__M.jpg
Awaruite/Josephinite from Josephine Creek, Oregon. Source: https://www.mindat.org/photo-558599.html

Awaruite is “silver-white to grayish white”, “strongly magnetic” and has a hardness of 5 on the 10-point Mohs scale. It is malleable and tends to be a little bit softer when its nickel content is a little higher. The presence of nickel means the alloy tends to rust much less readily than iron with very little or no nickel. Below is a model of Awaruite’s crystal structure, from a German online Mineral Atlas www.mineralienatlas.de. If you go to this link and scroll down to find this diagram, it is possible to rotate it in 3D and view other information (if you right click on the linked page, you can translate it into English, if you want).

crystal structure awaruite jjj

Skey’s announcement of Awaruite was in a paper read before the Wellington Philosophical Society on 21 October, 1885, which was then published in a brief two-page piece as Article LXI “On a New Mineral (Awaruite) from Barn Bay” in volume 18 of the Proceedings and Transactions of the New Zealand Institute. (This volume was dated in sequence by cataloguers as 1885 but it actually had a publication date, recorded in the fine print, of May 1886, a point confirmed by James Hector in 1887.)

As noted in a previous Post, William Skey spent 35 years as chemical analyst with the New Zealand Geological Survey under the leadership of James Hector. (In 1865, Hector and Skey had announced the discovery of New Zealand’s first mineral, Taranakite.) Skey argued that Awaruite was a terrestrial rock and did not come from a meteorite. Natural iron-nickel alloys are very rare on Earth and are usually from meteorites. “The even size of the grains, and their number, together with their richness in nickel and apparent uniformity of composition, support the ‘terrestrial’ theory”, he wrote. Skey thought it was the second earth-origin nickel-iron alloy to be discovered but it was really the first, as noted by G.H.F. Ulrich in his 1890 article, “On the discovery, mode of occurrence, and distribution of the nickel-iron alloy, ‘awaruite’ and the rocks of the district on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand in which it is found” (“Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London”, volume 46, pages 619–632). 

The name chosen by Skey, “Awaruite”, was probably taken from Awarua Bay, also known as Big Bay. As Te Ara The Encyclopedia of NZ states, the name is slightly misleading as the mineral does not occur in the Awarua River or Awarua (Big) Bay or even in Barn Bay. As expressed in a 1980 article in Mineralogical Magazine, “The name ‘awaruite’ is therefore to some extent a misnomer”.

Every mineral has a “Type Locality”, which is the locality where the original material came from for the formal definition of the mineral. As mindat.org, the world’s largest non-commercial online mineralogical database, notes, the Type Locality for Awaruite is the Gorge River in Westland. It then states: “The mineral was named after the Awarua River, or the Awarua Bay it flows into, however the species is not found in either site.” Due to this confusion between the name, locality and actual sources of Awaruite, a Government geologist, James Park, (later Director of the Thames School of Mines and Professor of Mining at the Otago School of Mines) visited the area and investigated in 1886, stating the material was to be found in the Gorge and Hope Rivers in gravel wash, and in-situ in serpentinite in the river valleys. The Gorge and Hope Rivers drain the Red Hills Range.

1890 map by Ulrich. Source: Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 43, 1980, page 649
1974 map by Williams. Source: Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 43, 1980, page 649
West Coast area between Haast and Milford Sound. Source: Google Maps
West Coast area between Haast and Milford Sound. Source: Google Maps

The left map above is “Fig. 1 – Geological sketch-plan and locality map of West Coast, New Zealand, between Jackson’s River and Hollyford Valley, as given by Ulrich (1890) who ascribes it to Paulin and Mueller.” The map second from left above is “Fig. 2 – Geological sketch map of same area as in fig. I as given in Williams (1974)…” These two figures come from the 1980 article in Mineralogical Magazine. The satellite photo second from right is taken from Google Maps and shows the area in Figs 1 & 2, with the red indicator on Gorge River. The satellite photo on the far right above, again from Google Maps, shows the wider geographical context, including Haast and Milford Sound.

William Skey. Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/3548/william-skey
George Ulrich, about 1905. Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/1981/george-henry-frederick-ulrich-about-1905
James Park (left). Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/2396/university-of-otago-professors-james-park-left-and-william-noel-benson-ham-it-up-0

Wikipedia notes Awaruite is also known as Josephinite, reflecting the fact that it was independently identified in Josephine County, Oregon, where it is found as placer nuggets in stream channels and masses in serpentinized portions of some of the local rocks. As Skey’s paper containing the name Awaruite was published just prior to the naming of Josephinite in publication, Awaruite became the official name for the mineral and Josephinite a recognised synonym. Mindat.org and web.mineral.com also refer to Josephinite as a synonym for Awaruite. (Two other synonyms are Bobrovskite and Souesite, names given to this alloy at the time when it was found in the Bobrovka River in Russia and in the Fraser River in Canada respectively).

However, against this view, an investigation published in 1979 in the “Geochemical Journal” concluded that Josephinite is a rock name and Awaruite is a mineral name. As a Ohio State University geologist put it, Josephinite is a “crystalline-textured, polymineralic rock” that is dominantly composed of the mineral Awaruite. Josephinite rocks contain an unusual mineral assemblage consisting of Awaruite, Andradite Garnet, Wairuite, minor Pyrrhotite, minor Pentlandite, and other minor minerals. A similar view is put forward, for example,  in a 1976 article in the “American Journal of Science”. 

Josephinite is one of the two official minerals of Oregon, so declared in 2013 “to promote education through the earth sciences, encouraging curiosity and study”. The other is Oregonite. Both Josephinite and Oregonite consist primarily of nickel and iron, and are typically associated with iron meteorites, but as terrestrial minerals are found only in the State of Oregon in the United States, not in any of the other States.

“Little Things” – The Value of Small Stones

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed (page 66 of Khalil Gibran, 1923, “The Prophet”).

The “treasure chest” is constructed from brown cardboard.
The 50 little stones in the treasure chest

I recently gave a small “treasure chest” of polished stones to a friend for her birthday. I filled it with 50 little stones, many of them not much larger than one of my fingernails. The stones are from the beaches of the south coast of Southland, mainly from Riverton and Gemstone Beach. Within these 50 are a wide range of the types of stones to be found on these beaches.

Walking along the beach, head down, alert for interesting stones, my eye is often caught by a flash of bright colour belonging to a small stone. At the beginning of my tumble-polishing passion, I collected a lot of such small stones but soon adjusted my eye to pay more attention to larger ones. The smaller ones get even smaller throughout the polishing process. The larger ones promise much more, can be tumbled longer, can be shaped more to remove imperfections and cracks and pits, and are more commanding with their polished presence. So, for a while, I disciplined myself NOT to pick up the smaller stones that caught my eye.

It is also the case, however, that a good mix of different sized stones in a tumble barrel is the ideal. The larger stones need smaller ones to make the process of wearing and shaping more effective. The small stones “carry” the grit or polish to the larger stones, fill up the spaces between them, and balance the load.

Contents of a 3lb barrel of polished stones collected on Riverton beaches
Stones of different sizes from Birdlings Flat
Batch of tumbled stones from Gemstone Beach

Furthermore, some small stones are striking in their pattern or colour or shape, and are valuable in their own right as interesting and beautiful stones. So, now, I allow myself to collect stones of many sizes and do not neglect the smaller ones.

I numbered each of the 50 stones in the birthday “treasure chest” (see photo below, left) and provided a list of the types of stones they were, if I knew.

The 50 stones, numbered
Close-up of some of the little stones

Included were hydrogrossular stones (#8, #31 and possibly #46), stones with fossilised warm casts or traces (#17 and #49, also maybe #29), a pink rhodonite stone (#1), various quartzites (#18, #35, #38 and #45), smoky quartz (#28), a porpyry (#3), andesite (#13), banded rhyolite [now identified as ignimbrite](#22), other rhyolites (#5, #10, #12 and #23), pink granite (#26), jasper (#7, #9, #21, #30, #40 and #43), breccia (#32 and #39), quartz (#34) and argillite (#15, #20, #47 and #50).

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things (Robert Brault).

“From Little Things Big Things Grow”

Atoms make up elements, elements make up minerals, minerals make up rocks, rocks make up continents and mountains and tectonic plates…

Source: “Photographic Guide to Roacks & Minerals of New Zealand”, page 7
Gemstone Beach stone
Gemstone Beach stone
Gemstone Beach stone

From little things big things grow.

Rocks eventually become sand, then sand gets compressed back into great formations of sedimentary rocks which may then become metamorphic rocks through further intense pressure and heat, becoming igneous rocks if melted at depth… 

“A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonder” by Gary Greenberg (2008)
Sand from Geriba Beach, Brazil, magnified 300x. Source: Page 18 of “A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonder” by Gary Greenberg (2008)
Sand from Lahinch, Ireland, magnified 125x. Page 34 of “A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonder” by Gary Greenberg (2008)

…and a little sand becomes symbolic of big matters when poured from one hand to another…

Paul Kelly “From Little Things Big Things Grow”
www.paulkelly.com.au  The story behind the song 

Gather round people, I’ll tell you a story,
An eight year long story of power and pride.
British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiarri
Were opposite men on opposite sides.

Vestey was fat with money and muscle,
Beef was his business, broad was his door.
Vincent was lean and spoke very little,
He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor.

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

Gurindji were working for nothing but rations
Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land.
Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter,
Gurindju decided they must make a stand.

They picked up their swags and started off walking,
At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down.
Now it don’t sound like much but it sure got tongues talking
Back at the homestead and then in the town.

From little things big things grow

Vestey man said, “I’ll double your wages
Seven quid a week you’ll have in your hand.”
Vincent said, “Uh-uh, we’re not talking about wages,
We’re sitting right here till we get our land.”

Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered,
“You don’t stand the chance of a cinder in snow.”
Vince said, “If we fall, others are rising.”
From little things big things grow

Then Vincent Lingiarri boarded an aeroplane,
Landed in Sydney, big city of lights,
And daily he went round softly speaking his story
To all kinds of men from all walks of life.

And Vincent sat down with big politicians.
“This affair,” they told him, “is a matter of state.
Let us sort it out. Why, your people are hungry.”
Vincent said, “No thanks, we know how to wait.”

From little things big things grow

Then Vincent Lingiarri returned in an aeroplane
Back to his country once more to sit down,
And he told his people, “Let the stars keep on turning
We have friends in the south, in the cities and towns.”

Eight years went by, eight long years of waiting,
Till one day a tall stranger appeared in the land.
And he came with lawyers and he came with great ceremony
And through Vincent’s fingers he poured a handful of sand.

From little things big things grow

That was the story of Vincent Lingairri,
But this is the story of something much more,
How power and privilege can not move a people
Who know where they stand and stand in the law.

From little things big things grow

A Three Pound Barrel of Polished Stones from Riverton

Today a 3lb barrel of stones collected from Riverton beaches last year finished the tumble-polishing process. Altogether, 46 stones came out of the barrel, some with the odd blemish, but many in excellent order, well polished and free from chips and cracks.

Polished stones from Riverton
Riverton stones
Riverton stones polished
Stones from Riverton beaches

Some of these stones are impressive on both sides:

Some are colourful and bright:

Others are more muted, darker, but nonetheless fascinating:

Taranakite: The Story of the First Mineral Described From New Zealand

Taranakite is the first of 13 minerals that have been first described from New Zealand and accepted as valid by the International Mineralogical Association. This is its story.

Taranakite is a fine-grained, cream-coloured phosphate, originally found in veins cutting volcanic rock on the tiny Sugar Loaf Islands (Nga Motu) near New Plymouth in Taranaki. It was first discovered by Henry Robert Richmond, Superintendent of the Taranaki Province (1865-1869), and then described in 1865 by James Hector (a Scottish geologist who was NZ’s leading scientist for many years, and after whom Hector’s dolphin was named) and William Skey (an analytical chemist). The details of their publication are as follows: “Taranakite, a new phosphatic mineral, Taranaki, presented by H. Richmond, Esq.” in Appendix A. Supplementary Report on Class 1. Reports of the Jurors, New Zealand Exhibition, pp. 423-425 (available online here). [The authoritative mindat.org mineral database entry on Taranakite mistakenly has “Expedition” instead of “Exhibition” in the title of this article.]

Hector and Skey wrote that chemical analysis showed this mineral to be “essentially a double hydrous phosphate of alumina and potash, part of the alumina being replaced by sesqui-oxide of iron” (pages 423-424). Such a mineral had not been reported before and the authors had named it “after the locality where it is found”. 

Te Ara The Encyclopedia of New Zealand states that Taranakite is formed by a chemical reaction between bird droppings (guano) and weathered volcanic rock. Technically, Taranakite is a “hydrated alkali iron-aluminium phosphate mineral” with the chemical formula (K,Na)3(Al,Fe3+)5(PO4)2(HPO4)6·18H2O. As wikivisually.com puts it, it forms from the reaction of clay minerals or aluminous rocks with solutions enriched in phosphate derived from bat or bird guano or, less commonly, from bones or other organic matter. It is most commonly found in humid, bat inhabited caves near the boundary of guano layers with the cave surface. It is also found in constantly wet coastal locations that have been occupied by bird colonies, such as the Sugar Loaf Islands off Taranaki where Richmond found it. 

James Hector (see photos below) had been born in Edinburgh in 1834. He graduated with a medical degree in 1856 and was then appointed doctor and geologist on the Palliser Expedition to Canada which undertook exploration for new railway routes. In 1858, while in the Canadian Rockies, his horse kicked him and he was thought to be dead. However, he revived. “Kicking Horse” Pass and River were named after this event. In 1862, he was employed to go to Dunedin in New Zealand to conduct a three-year geological survey of Otago, soon after the discovery of gold there. It was during this time that he first employed William Skey. In 1865 Hector was appointed to found the Geological Survey of New Zealand, and it was in that year that he and Skey published the discovery of Taranakite.

James Hector became widely consulted by the New Zealand government on scientific matters. He was responsible at various periods for many scientific institutions, including the Meteorological Department, the Colonial Observatory, the Wellington Time-ball Observatory and the Botanic Garden of Wellington, and for the custody of the standard weights and measures and the Patent Office library. In fact, for 40 years, he controlled virtually every aspect of state-funded science in the country. He was knighted in 1887. He retired in 1903 and died in 1907. An account of his life and work can be found in Te Ara The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

William Skey (see photos below) was born in London in 1835 and worked in farming before coming to New Zealand with his brother in 1860. After a couple of years spent in the Otago goldfields, James Hector appointed him as laboratory assistant to the Geological Survey of Otago. In 1865, Skey moved with Hector to Wellington when the latter set up the NZ Geological Survey. He spent 35 years as chemical analyst with the Survey. His job entailed the provision of chemical analyses by which the economic potential of geological discoveries could be assessed. For example, in the article he wrote with Hector announcing the discovery of Taranakite, Skey wrote that if Taranakite “could be obtained in quantity at a reasonable expense, it would be valuable as a source of phosphoric acid for agricultural purposes” (page 424). As well as his chemical analyst work, Skey maintained a strong interest in farming, and had a small property in the Carterton area. His other major interest was poetry, writing especially parodies of Shakespeare and Milton which have been described as deliciously awful.

When Skey died in 1900, James Hector wrote in his obituary that Skey had become a world authority in many aspects of mineral chemistry and petrology (the study of rocks). This is a remarkable achievement because Skey had very little formal training, he worked extraordinarily hard for long hours and low pay, and his work was carried out essentially in isolation, in basic conditions with unsophisticated scientific instruments. He was involved in the discovery of two of New Zealand’s 13 minerals, Tarankite and Awaruite. An account of William Skey’s life and work can be found in Te Ara The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. 

Taranakite has now been found in a wide range of locations across the globe (see the photo below left for the localities map from Mindat). The photo of Taranakite second from left below is from Chrystalls Beach on the coast near Milton in Otago, New Zealand: “Coming from a rock-stack used by sea-birds, this cross-section of a rock, probably basalt, shows alteration to taranakite caused by the action of guano. The compact white layer at the top is the taranakite.” The photo second from right below is from Skipton Caves, Mt. Widderin, Victoria, Australia: “White chalky mass of Taranakite…on minor basalt matrix.” The photo on the far right below shows Taranakite resulting from the alteration of bat guano in the Sassyk-Unkur cave in Kyrgyzstan. Source of all four photos is mindat.org.

I have found that the best researched and most informative account of Taranakite to be the one on classicgems.net. It notes that “it is very soft…, lacks cleavage and is malleable and unctuous (having a greasy or soapy feel). Taranakite gems are extremely rare, very small and considered to be a gem collector’s oddity.”

For another mineral first described in New Zealand, see Awaruite: The Story of the Second Mineral Described From New Zealand.