Today I got the chance to fossick on a part of the beach to the west of the Waiau River. The Waiau flows into Te Waewae Bay about 12 kilometres to the west of Gemstone Beach (see maps below). The Bay is located on the coast of Foveaux Strait, Southland, and its long sweep is 27 kms in length. It stretches from Monkey Island in the southeast (the location of a freedom camping site) to its far end (beyond the start of the Hump Ridge Track) in the northwest. Gemstone Beach is located towards the southeast end, about 7 kilometres from Monkey Island. The Waiau River is roughly in the middle.
For more on Te Waewae Bay from a fossicker’s point of view, see this TumbleStoneTwo Post.
Chrissy lives at The Cliffs, Papatotara, an interesting rural subdivision of smallholdings. She learned much of her tumble polishing from my blog about a year ago. She invited me to a fossick on the beach below her home and I was very pleased to accept. After a great cup of coffee and much comparing of polished stones, Chrissy, Ohla (her dog) and I spent a couple of hours on the beach. There were lots of stones there, though not quite the diversity of Gemstone Beach and just a little less smooth than most Gemstone Beach material. They reminded me a lot of the kind of stones to be found on the beaches of Riverton Aparima. There is a little carpark near the entrance to The Cliffs and visitors can walk through a paddock to the beach from there.
Chrissy and I had a companionable fossick, comparing and discussing our finds. I passed a number of trace fossil stones to her. We found a small number of what I would call “low grade” hydrogrossular garnets, the white variety with black inclusions, but no others. Thank you, Chrissy and Ohla, for a very pleasant time!
This Post features seven of the stones I collected today. The largest is a breccia, with maybe jasper making up most of the fragments. One of the medium-sized stones is black and white – quite a few variations of this colour combination were on the beach.
The next stone is an intriguing one. One one side it kind of looks like quartzite. On the other side, it appears to be a quite plain dark sedimentary stone. I have found stones like this before, often white on the “colourful” side – having the dark sedimentary backing seems to give the “colourful” side more intensity.
The final four: Chrissy found the first one, which contains some nice pink hues, maybe thulite, and she kindly gave it to me. Next is another of the black and white stones I picked up, this one because of the snowflake-like white spots. The last stone below, with intense white opaque crystals, was spotted by me just as a wave flowed over it – I patiently waited for the wave to recede and found the stone still in the same spot.
Many thanks to Chrissy for the fossick and conversation, and the coffee.
The next Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series is called “Delightful Discoveries, Desperate De-pants-ing, and Dramatic Drenchings on Gemstone Beach”. The first Post in the Series is here and the Index to the Series is here.
It was an absolute pleasure to fossick with you John! Thank you for letting me pick your brains over coffee and stone-fossicking – I learnt so much today! Ohla dog thanks you for the many pets too!
I appreciated the dog time too, having to leave puppy Jasper back in Whanganui.