It’s a three hour round trip from my current base at Riverton/Aparima to Slope Point and back, but well worth it. I turned up at Oliver Simpson’s place near Slope Point this morning in time for us to reach a nearby beach just before low tide. From a distance of a hundred metres, there appeared to me to be very few stones on the beach, but venturing onto it revealed quite a number scattered here and there, enough to keep me occupied for a couple of hours. Today’s Stone of the Day is a small one, maybe only a couple of centimetres long, but it appears to be a brecciation of tiny brecciations:
A view of another side shows similar material:
Conditions on the beach were reasonably good – the heavy rain from overnight had largely gone by the time we arrived, though the wind was a little on the cool side. Oliver retreated to sit in the truck after a good fossick (including finding a nice small fossil fern stone) while I continued along the beach. Fortunately, he noticed a large sea-lion about to come to shore just ten metres from where I was walking, head down and oblivious. He rushed out and drew my attention to the risk, for which I am very grateful – it was a LARGE sea-lion!
I found quite a few interesting rhyolite stones today, and other types too. Here is a selection of the diversity of stones I collected:
The next Post in the Series, on Stone #10, a Gemstone Beach green, is here. The first Post in this Series is here.
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