South of the city of Oamaru in North Otago, the coast stretches for about 20 kilometres down past Kakanui to the mouth of the Waianakarua River. The beaches along here are often stony, though the amount of stones and the degree of their smoothness vary considerably. Fossickers have been known to visit a number of these beaches, including the Waianakarua River mouth and Kakanui Beach at the Kakanui River mouth. It was in June 2020 that I first explored this coastline and stumbled across a beach, two kilometres north of the village of Kakanui. I found a number of gorgeous quartzites and jaspers there, and it quickly became one of my favourite fossicking sites. Since then, I have also found petrified wood, limestone pebbles with tiny fossils in them, bryozoan fossils stones, and a piece of agatised bone.
The southern end of this beach is at the intersection of Thousand Acres Road/Beach Road and Seadown Road (a stretch of Beach Road to the north of here has been closed due to encroachment from the sea). I call it Seadown Beach. To the south is a stretch of rocky cliffs, to the north is a sweeping sandy beach with lots of stones (usually).
In February 2024, when I visited, I found that the sea had washed a lot of sand up over many of the stones. There were only isolated patches of pebbles here and there, though they were well worth searching.
This stretch of coast runs north for about five kilometres to the start of Cape Wanbrow, the headland just south of Oamaru. It is three kilometres from the start of Seadown Beach to the Beach Road Reserve. I mainly fossick along the initial 900 metres of Seadown Beach – at this stage, you come across a small number of boulders embedded in the sand.
Posts on TumbleStone Blog which provide an Introduction to Kakanui’s Seadown Beach:
- “Thirty New Zealand TumbleStones for the USA – Part Two: Ten from Kakanui” – An introduction to the beach, with location map and aerial photos, including a YouTube video of the Kakanui area coast from a drone, plus a couple of handfuls of polished stones from the beach. December 2020.
- “Twenty Thesis Milestones for Lynley, Part One” – These stones come from Seadown Beach. A short introduction to the area is provided. July 2021.
- “End of South Island Stone Collecting Trip, May/June 2020 – Days 19 to 22” – The Day 20 entry records one of my earliest visits to Seadown Beach, a four hour fossick on a cold winter’s day. Provides a good sense of the kinds of stones found there.
- “Another South Island Fossicking Trip, February/ March 2021 – Days 1 to 4 (Kaikoura Coast, Amberley Beach, Leithfield Beach, Kakanui)” – Days 3 and 4 entries contain photos of the beach in different weather conditions.
Other TumbleStoneTwo Pages on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach:
KAKANUI’S SEADOWN BEACH: LOCATION ON NORTH OTAGO COASTLINE
KAKANUI’S SEADOWN BEACH: MY STONE FOSSICKING
KAKANUI’S SEADOWN BEACH: THE STONES
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