“The big wave is my friend!” I used to hate those waves, more powerful than the others, that forced me further up the beach, taking my focus from my line of fossick along the wet stones, maybe splashing over the top of my gumboots. I changed my mind a couple of years ago. That bigger wave refreshes the wet stones, turns them over, and provides a fresh field of view. And it can bring gifts. Nowadays, whenever a wave chases me and I stop my dash up across the stones, I pause and carefully look around me. Sometimes, like today, I spot an interesting stone right next to me – this time it was a gorgeous green hydrogrossular garnet.
I spent another four hours fossicking today, starting at the Gemstone Beach carpark and walking westwards along the Te Waewae Bay coast. Sixteen stones are featured in this Post, some of them unusual, all of them with interesting patterns and colours or veins.
Stone two seems to consist of small often geometric fragments all packed closely together. The colours are also unusual. A member of the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils” suggested that perhaps it is a brecciated jasper. Stone three has lots of pink and dark red, with quartz veins, and it might be a jasper too.
The next three stones looked intriguing and I hoped the photos would show the details of their structure. The first stone was my most unusual find, and even after looking at the close-ups, I don’t know what it is. What looks like tiny fossils are more likely to be crystals, maybe; or is it breccia? The second is an interesting variety of white quartz, with some depth to the clouds in it. And the third could be a breccia, tiny fragments cemented together in a fine-grained matrix.
A banded argillite stone with some interesting little features:
I found another tiny poppy jasper (next photo) and a slightly bigger version of a very similar type. Two other jaspers included one with some light colours and one with some interesting quartz veins. The next stone has a complex structure of tiny crystals in various hues of green, while the last one in this immediate group is a banded argillite (having a less “melted” composition than the one above) with a very fine white vein that caught my eye on the beach.
Finally, three of the hydrogrossular garnets I collected, along with a photo of all of my finds today:
The next Post features a Gemstone Beach fossick while the North Island of New Zealand was being battered by Cyclone Gabrielle. The first Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series is here. The Index to the Series is here.
3 thoughts on “Southern Sojourn 2023(13): “Big Wave, My Friend” – Gemstone Beach, Saturday 11 February”