“TUMBLESTONETWO” [Under Construction]
INFORMATION ABOUT STONES, BEACH STONE GATHERING, AND TUMBLE-POLISHING, FROM NEW ZEALAND
FOSSICKING BEACHES — BEACH STONES — TUMBLE-POLISHING
Note – Scroll down past this Post to see the most recent Posts from TumbleStone Blog, such as: TumbleStone Calendar 2026 – – A Selective Annotated Index to Poppy Jaspers in TumbleStone Blog – – An Annotated Index of Indexes on TumbleStone Blog – – Index to “August 2025 Stone Collecting Trip” Series – – Thirty Gemstone Beach Pebbles for Doug: Part One – Stones 1 to 5 – – A Small White Orbicular Jasper From Gemstone Beach — “Burrowing Worms” of the Permian in Brook Street Terrane Rocks East of Tihaka Beach — Gemstone Beach and its Stones: An Introduction for the Passing Motorist – Part One, Location and Carpark — Two 2017 TumbleStone Posts Revisited: Callanish Standing Stones, Scotland, and Malham Cove, England.
“TumbleStoneTwo” is a website within a blog, “TumbleStone Blog”. The website’s home page is always the first post when someone goes onto the blog. Links are then made from there to other blog posts masquerading as website pages. The titles of these website pages start with “TS2” and have the TumbleStoneTwo banner at the top.
Popular TumbleStoneTwo pages: GEMSTONE BEACH AND ITS STONES: AN INTRODUCTION FOR THE PASSING MOTORIST; GEMSTONE BEACH: LOCATION ON TE WAEWAE BAY; FOSSICKING BEACHES; TUMBLE-POLISHING.
TumbleStoneTwo is a Companion Site to TumbleStone Blog but presents information in a more systematic way. Author: John Paterson, Whanganui, New Zealand, email john.tumblestone@gmail.com
THIS SITE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Pages will be added from time to time. Pages will also be up-dated or expanded. See LIST OF CONTENTS TO DATE for information on which Pages are “live”.
The information on this website is based on the firsthand experiences and research of John Paterson, a retired academic in New Zealand. I have been collecting beach stones and tumble-polishing them since March 2016, which was also when I started TumbleStone Blog.
Note that the coverage of this website is very limited. Only a few beaches in the South Island are included, because of my familiarity with them. Beaches on the West Coast of the South Island, in the Nelson region, and in the North Island, are not included. Only the stones I have familiarity with will be covered, and it is the rotary tumble-polishing method that is featured.
By early 2022, my Blog had grown too large for people to find easily some of the more useful information in it. And so TumbleStoneTwo, a new website, was born, initially to provide links to Blog Posts within a more accessible website-like framework. New information too will appear on TumbleStoneTwo.
My approach to beach localities and fossicking is similar to that of four books I am familiar with. The first is Bill Myatt’s (1972) “Australian and New Zealand Gemstones: How and Where to Find Them”. Pages 431 to 445 of Myatt’s book consist of a New Zealand section written by Mrs A. Niethe, detailing fossicking places in the different regions. Information is also provided about transport links and accommodation. The second book is Natalie Fernandez’s (1981) “The New Zealand Rockhound”. Her “Locations” chapter (pages 91-122) lists a multitude of places and the main types of stones to be found there.
The third book is Jocelyn Thornton’s (1985) “Gemstones”. This includes sections on seven beach areas, with photos of stones of interest to the stone polisher (accessible online here). Finally, James Crampton and Maianna Terezow’s (2010) book, “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”, though about fossils rather than stones in general, has 27 chapters on localities for fossil hunting in New Zealand. They provide an excellent set of information for each locality, its geographical and geological contexts, and its fossils. TumbleStoneTwo aims to provide useful information for fossickers about a small number of New Zealand beaches and their stones.
“The Stones Farm Accommodation”, an Airbnb self-contained one-bedroom unit near Kai Iwi Beach, Whanganui, is located on my lifestyle block.
There are three Main Sections to the TumbleStoneTwo website:
FOSSICKING BEACHES – BEACH STONES – TUMBLE-POLISHING
Three supplementary Main Pages are:
LIST OF CONTENTS TO DATE – ABOUT ME – HALL OF FAME
We’ve been fossicking (learned a new word!) at Gemstone Beach yesterday, and I’ve stumbled on your blog by googling around to verify rumours of sapphire finds there. I ended up reading a dozen of your amazing articles. We’re planning to polish some of our finds for ear rings to give away to friends. We thought it might be cool to have one ear ring specimen from Gemstone Beach and the other from around Nelson. It blows my mind that those geological layers used to be in the same location!
Thanks so much for writing about your passion. Ingo & Verity (Wellington)
Hi Ingo and Verity! Thanks for your comments. I am pleased you find my blog useful! Good fossicking on other beaches. John