Nicola Gray and Angie Nicholas, who had arrived recently from Hawkes Bay, visited me in Riverton Aparima this morning to view some of my rough finds and polished stones. On this trip, I had brought with me specimens of polished stones from Gemstone Beach, Slope Point and Kakanui. We spent some time talking stones, a bit of a luxury to have three keen fossickers and polishers getting together.
We then went for a fossick at Te Waewae Bay, starting at Gemstone Beach. The weather started off well but the wind got stronger as the afternoon progressed. Mary from Slope point joined us for about an hour – she will host the two travelling fossickers in a couple of days time. Nicola and Mary drove the seven kilometres west to McCracken’s Rest for a fossick there, but Angie and I were too tired so we took our time making our way back to the carpark. [See here for some background on McCracken’s Rest.]
Angie seemed to make the most spectacular finds of the day – six of them are featured below, five of them having been photographed by me on the beach, one (the trace fossil) photographed the next day back at my accommodation. Angie really has developed an eye for fossicking along the Te Waewae beach, and at times was digging into the drifts of stones, discovering some great stuff. Nicola and I just plugged away, picking up what we could stumble over, it seemed. But we also ended up with a good bunch of great finds.
The first featured find of Angie’s is a spectacular dark red jasper. It almost looks like it was melted. I don’t recall finding a jasper this intense in colour before:
Angie also rescued this small intense pink thulite from a wave, one of the best examples I have seen:
She then goes and finds a hydrogrossular garnet of a type I have not seen before! It took me a while to sort this one out as I don’t associate many small floating patches (almost spots) with garnets. But the stone has a distinct waxy feel, there is a pink blush in the patches on one side, which can be found in some garnets, and the opaque material is familiar.
The other three stones are also exquisite (see below). The first is a most unusual trace fossil, where the trace is made up of more than one colour; the second one has intense green veins of what is probably epidote; and the third is a small dark-coloured stone, probably green quartz with clouds of brown iron oxide. Angie generously gave me the trace fossil stone.
Post 38 features my own finds from today. The first Post in the “Southern Sojourn” Series is here, the Index to the Series is here.
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