Southern Sojourn 2023(52): Four Jaspers From a Post-Storm Fossick at Gemstone Beach/Te Waewae Bay, Wednesday 26 April

After two days of wind and rain kept me indoors, I returned to Gemstone Beach (Southland) this morning. It was nine degrees when I arrived, an onshore wind was blowing, and the occasional shower of rain came across. While I was there, the odd handful of passing motorists stopped off and ventured briefly onto the beach. I expected the Taunoa Stream to be too deep to ford but it wasn’t, though it was higher and flowing swiftly. There seemed to be more sand on the beach than before the stormy weather, but the stirring of the stones had thrown up a few small hydrogrossular garnets.

The Waimeamea River had once again broken through to the sea so I turned back at that point. I climbed over a fresh section of driftwood at the back of the beach to climb up the cliff to take photos of the river mouth. Doing so, I found an interesting piece of driftwood (see photos below).

I was very selective in my fossicking but did collect some small jaspers. I knew that a couple of them were poppy jaspers (orbicular) but was unsure about the others. In the afternoon, back at my accommodation, I was able to do some photographing of stones during a number of very brief periods of sunlight. Some of the photos have reflections in them when the light conditions deteriorated. But they show the orbicular of some as well as one that contained tiny areas of agate. The most interesting jasper was the smallest one, only 1.5 cm long. It’s the one that turned out to have some agate in it:

This was the jasper that I recognised on the beach as being patterned, but I couldn’t decide if it was brecciated or orbicular (it’s 4 cm long):

It’s probably orbicular. This next jasper (also 4 cm long) has a very rough surface but had a nice intense colour. The photos revealed it was made up of masses of tiny orbs:

Another small jasper (2.5 cm long) that turned out to have many tiny orbs:

Six of the other stones I collected this morning:

The first Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series is here. The Index to the Series is here.