My March 2025 trip actually began at the end of February with this visit to Ward Beach in Marlborough. This was the first day of a five week trip to the South Island to collect beach stones for tumble polishing. I left home in Whanganui the day before to catch a Cook Strait ferry in Wellington. After reaching Picton in the South Island, I drove for an hour to Ward, arriving at the Flaxbourne Motel in the early evening yesterday. This morning, after checking-out, I drove to Ward Beach. The weather was warm and partly cloudy.
At this time of year, in late summer, there were quite a few campervans in the camping area behind the carpark. A small number of people were on the beach, exploring it. One man with binoculars mentioned that he had been watching some dolphins for an hour or so. I had just noticed them and spent some time trying to get some decent photos of them. But that was a difficult task. These were Hector’s dolphins, the smallest of all the dolphins, identifiable by their rounded dorsal fin (similar to the shape of Mickey Mouse’s ear). See Wikipedia for more information on them.
I eventually tore myself away from dolphin watching and walked south towards the Flaxbourne River mouth looking for stones. The river flow was very low – it has been a dry summer, and a bank of stones has blocked off the mouth (though no doubt some water will be seeping through the stones to the sea).
Conditions were not very good for finding interesting stones – the waves were wetting sand rather than stones this morning. I collected about 30 pebbles today, mainly jaspers and limestone and flint, with some trace fossils. For an indication of the range of types of stones that can be found on Ward Beach, see the Series “Selection of Tumbled Ward Beach Stones” that begins with Part 1 on trace fossils. Below, I feature eight of today’s finds.
Photos can be revealing. I picked up the first stone (below) because it sparkled. However the photo and close-up show that the sparkles are tiny square or rectangular crystals, I thought they would have been circular – fascinating! The second stone is mainly flint – the dark colour – and only upon doing the close-up photos did I notice the chalcedony/agate in the vein.
I continued to keep an eye out for jaspers, a kind of stone I had largely ignored on this beach until last year. The most interesting (colourful) had hematite and quartz in it.
Two other jaspers I collected:
There are more limestone stones on Ward Beach than any other types. Some are colourful and are brecciated, often with white veins, as the first one below. Others are light grey with trace fossils in them.
Limestone is too soft to tumble polish normally. However, a short tumble of a handful of days in fine grit removes the cloudy surface and leaves a nice smooth waxy-feeling stone. The waxy feel is unusual and distinctive. Tumbling doesn’t give such a stone a high polish, but its surface is permanently clear, showing any trace fossils well. For more on the Ward Beach trace fossils, see “W is for Ward Beach Zoophycos”.
Next beach stop, Timaru. See here for the next Post in this Series.