September 2024 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 4, Multiple Quartzites from Seadown Beach, Kakanui, Friday 6 September

I spent two and a half hours this morning on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach. Previously, there had been some light rain and it was cloudy with no wind, so all the stones on the beach were wet. Great fossicking conditions! I was fortunate that the cloud parted for 20 minutes when I was back at my motel, allowing me to photograph a selection of my finds.

A type of stone that particularly stood out on the beach this morning was the yellow quartzite that can often be found here. I collected a few, always finding them hard to resist. Here are 20 of my quartzite finds – the photo above, right, shows their relative sizes and colours. These specimens illustrate only part of the many variations of this type of stone. All of these have tiny quartz crystals in them. The first four below are among the more “neutral” in colour:

Many of the quartzites on Seadown Beach have some yellow in them – three of the paler kind:

And there is quite a variety of ways in which yellow can be incorporated into the stone:

The yellow can often be quite intense, bordering on a kind of orange. And white, red, brown and grey can all contribute to the individuality of a quartzite:

Three final variations from today’s yellow-ish quartzite finds:

And I couldn’t resist putting this larger yellow quartzite (15 cm long) in the car, to add to the “rock garden” at home – after rain, that garden is spectacular due to its coloured and patterned stones.

Of course, there are quartzites of other colours on Seadown Beach, especially green. The green ones often have interesting quartz veins in them. And I suspect that some of the brecciated stones on the beach are quartzite.

Today’s most unusual find is a kind of orbed stone I have not seen here before. The circular features are part of the stone, not algal growths or surface stains. I don’t know what they are.

Another unusual find – a pinkish stone that initially reminded me of Gemstone Beach’s thulite:

But closer inspection shows it to be a variety of what I called “fossilised sea floor” stones – which are usually whitish or cream-coloured.

This small black stone caught my eye because of the lighter-coloured material within it, making it a very attractive little pebble:

I found a few “limonite prase”, a kind of jasper which occurs along this coast. It often has holes and cracks in it which make it unsuitable for tumbling, so smooth specimens are prized. The following four finds are not quite “classic” limonite prase but I think are likely to be related:

Finally, three of my jasper finds today, which illustrate the excellent types that can be found on Seadown Beach:

Part 5 reports on my first fossick this trip at Gemstone Beach. The first Post in this Series can be found here.