See here for the first Post in this Series.
Day 17, Friday 5 March – Gemstone Beach. I had planned today to spend a few hours on Gemstone Beach. However, the North Island of New Zealand experienced a 7.1 magnitude earthquake at 2.27 am this morning off East Cape, waking many people. A tsunami alert was issued, but then later lifted. At 6.41 am, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck near the Kermadec Islands, 1,000 kilometres north-east of the country, followed by an 8.1 magnitude shake two hours later. Due to this new and increased tsunami risk, parts of the North Island coast were evacuated and the rest of New Zealand came under a beach and marine threat advisory that “strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges near the shore are expected”. (See a newspaper article about this here.)
Even though Gemstone Beach was at the furthest point on the country’s southern coast from the tsunami threat, I decided not to proceed with my fossicking plans. All the alerts and advisories were eventually lifted in the afternoon, although people who ventured onto beaches were told to remain alert and cautious. In the late afternoon, I decided to make a short visit to Gemstone Beach (I spent 50 minutes there) where I kept well away from the waves and fossicked in and near the Taunoa Stream mouth, just 200 metres from the carpark.
I bought a booklet called “Orepuki and Surrounds Heritage Trail” from the Riverton Museum (“Te Hikoi”) shop which refers to the naming of Taunoa Stream. John Boultbee was an English sailor who arrived at nearby Pahia in 1826 and lived with the Maori there for a year. “In his journal, Boultbee noted a ‘small kainga Toonau’ (Taunoa). This village/kainga was situated near the mouth of the Taunoa Stream, one kilometre west of Orepuki. Twenty years after Boultbee had written about this village, there was nothing left of the site as the Taunoa Stream had become the sludge channel into which all the [gold] miners dumped their tailings” (page 11).
Here are six of the stones I found during my short visit to the mouth of the Taunoa Stream:
Day 18, Saturday 6 March – Last visit to Gemstone Beach. I managed to spend nearly 6 hours on the beach today, finally tearing myself away at 4 pm. The unsettled sea yesterday and overnight had stirred up the stones a bit, as I found some really interesting ones.
I decided today to show first of all a photo of a stone which gives some idea of its size in my hand, with the second image then being a cropped version of the first photo to show close-up details of the stone. As a result, the first photo may include glimpses of my gumboot and/or my camera wrist-strap. Here are six of today’s finds:
Another eight:
Maybe because of the recently unsettled seas, I found more hydrogrossular garnets today than usual. This is the stone most sought after on Gemstone Beach. It is also the fourth of the 13 minerals first identified in New Zealand, having been identified in 1943. Here are six of the stones I found today that probably have hydrogrossular garnet in them:
The next Post in this Series deals with Days 19 and 20, on the start of my journey back north.
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