Southern Sojourn 2023(57): The Trip North – An Afternoon High Tide Fossick, Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, Tuesday 2 May

My second fossick at Seadown Beach, Kakanui, today started at high tide, at 1 pm. This meant that the stones situated higher up the beach were wet – at low tide, along most of the beach, there’s quite a bit of sand that’s wet but not many stones. I walked north along the beach from the roadside carpark area for maybe 750 metres and got back to the car two hours later.

These are the rocks that you can fossick in-between at low tide.

The stretch of the beach, looking north, that I fossicked along this afternoon.

Again, I came across lots of jaspers, a few fossil sea floor stones, and many quartzites. Anticipating poor sunlight when I got back to my accommodation, too poor for good photos, I decided to take photos 0f my finds on the beach, as I found each stone. The sun shone for a good part of the fossick, so that helped.

I also found a good specimen of a type of stone I was hoping for, one with lots of microfossils, that I first noticed on this beach in June 2022. A Scottish rockhound, John Taylor, had noted then that it was “similar to a Danish Fossil Okkergelber Hornstein made up of bryozoan”. It is only by looking closely at it that the tiny fossils can be seen.

Kakanui microfossil stone.

Other side of stone.

Another stone that reveals a fascinating composition is a type of quartzite that has tiny clear quartz crystals or fragments. Again, it’s necessary to look at these stones very closely to see their character. Here are three I found this afternoon:

One side of small quartzite.

Other side of stone.

First quartzite detail.

A second small quartzite.

Other side of second quartzite.

A third small quartzite stone.

Other side.

All three of these stones, but the first one in particular, are very reminiscent of a composite material used for floors and walls called “terrazzo” – it consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured into a binder (see Wikipedia). I had bought a soap dish in January for use in my Riverton Aparima accommodation made of a type of “terrazzo” material:

“Terrazzo” soap dish.

Soap dish detail.

First quartzite detail.

Four other quartzites I found:

Quartzite.

Yellow “cloud” quartzite.

Bright yellow quartzite.

Dark green quartzite,

Three of the fossil sea floor stones I collected – the third one has an unusual composition, different from the usual cream-coloured stone:

First fossil sea floor stone.

Close-up of first fossil sea floor stone.

Another close-up of first fossil sea floor stone.

Second fossil sea floor stone.

Second fossil sea floor stone.

Two of the jaspers from this afternoon:

First jasper.

Second jasper.

Finally, an iron-stained quartz and a small beach agate:

Iron-stained quartz stone.

Beach agate (chalcedony).

The next Post in this Series will report on my third and final fossick at Seadown Beach, Kakanui. An Index to the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series is here.

Author: tumblestoneblog

Retired Academic, male, living in the New Zealand countryside near Whanganui with his wife as well as Jasper the dog, Fluffy the cat, Dancer and Penny, the horses, and a shed half-full of stones. Email john.tumblestone@gmail.com. View all posts by tumblestoneblog