I spent a couple of hours this morning at Gemstone Beach, just prior to low tide. It started out cold – the temperature was six degrees when I left Riverton but had climbed to ten degrees by the time I got to the beach at Orepuki. However the day was sunny and it was 15 degrees when I left. I saw four horse riders down the beach, had a chat with the local gold miner, and counted 30 other people in front of the carpark when I got back there.
Here are eight of today’s finds. The first is an interesting fine breccia, the matrix being light green with the tiny fragments being mainly white, light to dark hues of green, and orange:
I found two large hydrogrossular garnets todays, both down near the Waimeamea River lagoon . The best is a green stone, six centimetres wide, with maybe the green due to chromium in it – parts of it have a slightly glassy look:
This poppy jasper which is one of the larger I have found though it is only four centimetres wide. I came across it while looking among dry stones near the base of the cliff:
Two igneous (volcanic) stones, both a type of rhyolite. The first is banded ignimbrite, and tends to tumble polish very well. The second is a brighter orange-brown, and a type I see from time to time on Gemstone Beach – I look for specimens with the least number of small pits so I can tumble polish them.
This is maybe amygdaloidal, an infilled volcanic stone. The white and orange in it make it an interesting stone:
A nice grey trace fossil in argillite:
For more examples of trace fossil stones, see stones Gn40 to Gn63 in this Post.
Finally, I like the two dominant colours in this stone:
The next Post in this Series is “Paragliders Over Gemstone Beach”. An Index to the Series is here.
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