Post 37 described how the weather on the south coast today started to turn windy. In the company of Nicola and Angie and, later, Mary and her two dogs, I spent about six hours on the Te Waewae Bay coast. This Post features eight of my finds. [The weather turned wet and cold on Wednesday night and I had to wait until Friday afternoon for some sunshine to be able to take some decent photos of these stones.] Note: One of the trace fossil stones below was actually given to me by Angie so strictly speaking it’s not one of my finds.
The most colourful of my featured finds are a small (3 cm long) red quartzite plus a larger (5 cm long) green layered mudstone (maybe argillite?) – both are striking but for different reasons:
The next three stones are: first, what I call a “sugar quartz” pebble, with some iron oxide mineral – such stones can be crumbly but the smoother ones, like this, can polish well if tumbled with care; second, a yellow and black stone, the smoothest one I found today; and third, what I think is a small rhyolite, with some nice detail, which will tumble polish well.
The final three stones (below) include two trace fossil stones. The first was found by Angie who kindly gave it to me when I pointed out how unusual it is – the double-coloured trace is very rarely seen. The second trace fossil stone caught my eye because of the large trace shape on the left side of it, again something only rarely seen. The final stone is a dark gray one with faint layers in it – it proved very difficult to photograph clearly without reflections interfering.
THE NEXT DAY
Nicola and Angie did a Gemstone Beach fossick in stormy weather on Thursday morning, with a wild sea and waves at times sweeping nearly to the foot of the bank in front of the carpark.
In the afternoon they visited me to show me their finds. At one stage, a hail shower interrupted the show-and-tell out on the deck. Two more of Angie’s finds are shown below – a trace fossil stone with red traces, and a fascinating little stone with tiny white spots.
On Friday, Nicola and Angie finished their time at Gemstone Beach and moved on to Slope Point.
Post 39 features a fossick again with Chrissy from The Cliffs, hunting poppy jaspers. The first Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series is here. The Index to the Series is here.
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