My fossick this morning at Gemstone Beach was just before high tide. So I mainly did my searching about 400 metres either direction from the carpark because I didn’t want to risk being caught between the waves and the cliffs. It was not a very productive fossick, but the stones I chose to photograph for this Post provided some nice surprises.
Below are photos of 12 of today’s finds. The largest one is a black stone whose colourful banding caught my eye. Picking it up, I saw that one side of it had a very different composition.
Four of the larger stones demonstrate the diversity and complexity of Gemstone Beach pebbles.
One of the stones looked initially as it might just be iron-stained quartz but closer inspection reveals fascinating patterns (see below), making it my favourite find today. Another, a breccia stone, has some really interesting fragments in it:
The last five stones include my close second favourite of the day, the second one below, with fascinating details and colours.
The next Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series highlights hydrogrossular garnet as one of the 13 minerals first identified in New Zealand. The first Post in the Series is here while the Index to the whole Series is here.
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