This was Day Two of my trip south from Whanganui, on my way to Riverton Aparima. Day One is covered in this Post. In the late morning of Day Two I stopped at Timaru South before continuing on to Kakanui where I stayed for two nights. Just south of Timaru city, I spent 2 1/4 hours walking north from the end of Scarborough Road. I walked past the ruins of the wharf (there is another further on, I noticed) to the end of the recently built floodbank which protects the railway line.
Among the stones I look for on this beach are jaspers and green quartzites. I found a large hematite jasper here in March 2022 (see the end of this Post) which I gave to Tracey Kidd to polish (she did a great job with it). Today I found a similar but smaller hematite jasper, as well as a few other jaspers.
Different coloured quartzites can be found on this beach. But it is the green ones that I find the most attractive. Here are four I collected today.
I found three porphyry stones similar to a type of stone I have found at Kakanui, 100 kms to the south. The Kakanui one is darker – see this Post – and a UK rockhound noted it was very similar to a rhomb-porphyry from Norway.
I then drove a couple of kilometres to the southern end of this beach, at the end of Ellis Road, where I met up with Tracey Kidd from Christchurch in her campervan. After we spent some time fossicking there, we drove to Kakanui. I had a brief early evening fossick at Seadown Beach as Tracey didn’t arrive until later. The next day, we spent some serious fossicking time there (see the next Post in this Series – the Index to the whole Series is here).
2 thoughts on “Southern Sojourn 2023(2): The Trip South – Thursday 19 January, Timaru South”