Today I drove from Riverton to Oamaru, taking just over six hours. I am staying at a motel in Alma, just south of the city, for three nights. Upon arrival, I went out to Kakanui’s Seadown Beach for an hour. It was high tide and quite a few stones were wet from the waves. I collected a small selection.
Below are photos of 10 of my finds. Note that the photos of the individual stones were taken when the sun was low, and the beach photos (above) were taken on my phone.
There are often interesting red jaspers on this beach. This small lighter-hued one is cute:
A larger redder jasper with more quartz in it:
A third jasper:
Two small stones – the first looks mainly quartz with a little iron oxide veining. In relation to the second one, John Taylor (a UK-based member of the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”) suggests if might be a “very fractured quartzite with iron based mineralisation filling the cracks?”
Three more yellowish stones – the first a brecciated quartz, the second a quartzite, the third also a quartzy specimen:
Two small elongated ovals, different kinds of quartz:
And, finally, a small light-green quartzite, smooth and circular – this type of quartzite is reasonably common on this beach:
Part 27 is “Fourteen Finds from Kakanui’s Seadown Beach”, from the following morning’s fossick. An Index to this Series is here.
