I spent five days based in Christchurch in late February, which enabled me to visit Birdlings Flat beach four times. The sea was very calm over this time and the weather posed no difficulties. At times, I was the only one on the beach or there were only two or three others there, walking a dog or fishing or also looking for interesting stones.
On one of the days, during a weekend, a group of photographers were at the Banks Peninsula end of the beach, making the most of the cliffs, waves and sky. I was accompanied that day by Diane, my niece and host. As we neared the photographers, we came across an unusual creature on the stones – it looked kind of like a sea caterpillar, but I have not been able to identify it.
I collected just over 9 kilograms of stones to take home to polish. I found a few beach agates, one of which had some very nice bands. I also saw some of my favourite yellow quartzite stones, including a couple of larger ones that had to be left on the beach.
In between visits to Birdlings Flat, Diane and I drove an hour inland and took a jet boat trip up the gorge of the Waimakariri River. We were fortunate enough to be the only two customers for Alpine Jet Thrills for that trip and had two guides to show us the landscape features. The geology of the gorge was interesting, though the rocks swept down the river to the sea end up north of Banks Peninsula and would not make their way to Birdlings Flat.
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