This Post is partly about the conditions under which stones are photographed. I had two days off from fossicking – one day to recover my energy after Sunday’s tiring activities and one day when the wind and rain were discouraging. In fact, we had quite a storm from Monday night through to Tuesday noon. I spent two hours on the beach on Wednesday morning, arriving at the Gemstone Beach carpark about 90 minutes after low tide. There had been a few rain showers on the drive there and the temperature was nine degrees, and only one other car was there at the time of my arrival. However, during my fossick, there was very little wind and only a couple of very light showers, and I soon warmed up. There was a bit more driftwood than usual on the beach, especially at the high tide line.
The Taunoa Stream, near the carpark, was only a little higher than usual, and had become quite braided as it flowed across the beach. This meant it was shallow enough to cross easily. However, further along the beach, the Waimeamea River was too high to ford. In between the two, there were lots of wet stones on the beach, including these 12. Wednesday afternoon was too cloudy for good photos to be taken of the stones so I took them in the sunshine on Thursday afternoon.
For this Post I took some photos of the stones while they were dry to show how dull they look compared to when wet. Often a hint of their colour and patterns is there, but only when wet and in the sun do the glorious details become clear. The first three stones include trace fossils. Stone 1 has a black trace.
Stone 2 is a breccia of argillite fragments, one of the fragments containing two small trace fossils. Stone 3 is a small (2 cm long) stone with red trace fossils.
Stone 4 is a nice shiny banded argillite. Stone 5 may also be banded argillite but the “bands” have been pushed around significantly. Stone 6 is an interesting whitish quartzite with some fascinating patterns.
Stones 7 and 8 are both pink thulites. Stone 7 is very smooth – most thulites I have seen are more like the “bumpy” Stone 8. Stone 9 is a fascinating green stone that, upon closer inspection, proves to be very complex in its composition.
The white “spots” in Stone 10 caught my eye on the beach. Green stones are common on Gemstone Beach and Stone 11 is one such with interesting bands. Stone 12 has flashes of white amid a number of other colours.
I initially took photos of the stones under clouds but I was not satisfied with their quality so waited a day for some sunshine. On a cloudy day, the photos tend to be less clearly focused so that the close-ups, produced by cropping, are less clear. Furthermore, it is much harder to reduce reflections under clouds. Four examples of the differences below, with the photos taken in sunshine lying below the photos taken under cloudy conditions (please note, the close-ups are not always directly comparable):
The next Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series features a green Gemstone Beach quartzite crisscrossed with silica canyons. The first Post in the Series is here and the Index to the Series is here.
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