Twenty-Four Slope Point Stones Polished for Oliver: Part 1, Stones 1 to 10

At the beginning of August, I finished tumble polishing some stones that Oliver Simpson had collected from Slope Point beaches (Southland). This is an area known for its black petrified wood, including tree ferns (ponga), and rhyolites. Jocelyn Thornton has a page on Slope Point stones in her booklet “Gemstones” (see page 35 here). Oliver is particularly interested in the petrified wood and often collects large pieces.

After we did a couple of fossicking trips to Slope Point beaches in June (see my Posts for 12 June and 18 June), Oliver showed me a number of his finds from over the years. I offered to tumble polish a few and he entrusted me with some of his smaller stones, many of them really fascinating. He also gave me to tumble a fossil coral he found at Slope Point and an unusual chalcedony stone from near Moeraki Village in North Otago (these will feature in future posts).

The first batch that I finished tumble-polishing numbered 24 stones (see photo above). Most had started with one or two tumbles in 400 grit, the grit and polish stages all being completed on 8 August. The largest stone, Stone #1, is about 4.5 cms long.

Here are the first 10 of these:

Stones #2 and #3 are perhaps the most spectacular and interesting. Stone #2 has a broken pattern of different colours with bright white agate-looking material at the top and bottom:

Stone #3 is an excellent example of fossilised tree fern material. The close-ups reveal exquisite complexity:

Stone #6 is another with intriguing markings:

Stones #1, #8 and #10 are similar pieces of petrified wood, very dark in colour for most of the stone but with some brown areas that reveal the wood. Stone #1:

Stone #8 has some interesting areas of wood grain:

Stone #10 has a prominent light-coloured band on one side:

Finally, four of the stones are petrified wood of different hues but with a light-coloured vein within them. Stones #4 and #5 are similar in having areas of light grain. Here are images of four sides of Stone #4:

And three sides of Stone #9:

Stones #5 and #7 are much darker in colour, so their white veins stand out more. Stone #7 in particular has an intriguing band, maybe quartz:

Part Two on the rest of the stones can be found here.