Today I visited Kakanui’s Seadown Beach twice. This Post relates to my 90 minutes morning fossick at low tide. It was not pleasant – the weather was cloudy, cool (13 to 14 degrees) and very windy. I arrived at the same time as a couple with a dog who went to collect mussels and seaweed. At one point the dog came over to me to say hello. The man chatted with me too – he is interested in agates and collects them along the coast between Kakanui and the Waianakarua River mouth. At the south end of the beach, just beyond the rocks, is usually an area of good stones, but there were very few there today. But continuing south, I visited three or four small bays with some good patches of stones. The beach photos below were taken on my phone.
I came across quite a large piece of limestone (about 13 centimetres long) that has fossil rhodoliths in it. I decided to take it home to put in the “rock garden”. This type of fossil was identified for me by “Kween Bee”, a member of the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”, when I met her on this beach in September last year.
I also found an interesting piece of petrified wood – I picked up a dry lined stone at one point, not at all sure what it was, and only identified it when I wet it back at my motel.
For my previous petrified wood finds from this beach, see “Petrified Wood from a Kakanui Beach”, “Another Kakanui Petrified Wood, and Woven Petrified Timelines” and “Diverse Finds at Kakanui’s Seadown Beach”.
The next find piqued my interest and I puzzled over it for some time. When I posted photos of it on the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”, a member commented: “It is an agate with a lot of tubes and inclusions- I found such at Kakanui too, but it is rather rare”:
When I found it, it reminded me of a much lighter-coloured stone I had found at Slope Point two years ago – see the fourth stone in “Fine Autumn Fossick, Black Point Beach, Slope Point”. It was suggested back in 2023 that my Slope Point find looked like a “joon agate”. As Craig McGregor notes, joon agates were first identified by John Earl and Gordon Auton. “Joon” is a term arising from joining “jo” from the start of “John” with “on” from end of “Auton”. They found specimens of this rock in Awarua Bay, which is maybe 45 kilometres west of Slope Point (and over 300 kilometres from Kakanui). McGregor went on to note that these stones had also been found on farmland in Tokanui (about seven kilometres inland from Slope Point), and in the Hedgehope River (further inland again). I’m not at all sure that this morning’s find is a joon agate but it’s interesting to compare them.
I always look for nice limestone pieces on this beach – I like to tumble these in a fine grit to clarify them and see any tiny fossils – see “Kakanui Fossilised Sea Floor Stones – Only 400 Grit Tumble”. The first find below is a good example of what I look out for, and the second is an unusual stone that I think is perhaps a kind of limestone:
An interesting small jasper:
A quartzy stone with a beautiful mineral pattern in it:
The next stone looks differently from the usual quartzites I find here – it has a fine grained-like appearance – so I was interested to see what the close-up photos revealed. It does look like a quartzite up close:
A couple of the more common quartzites found on this beach, a bright yellow one and a paler one:
A couple of yellow quartzy stones I picked up because of the interesting detail in them:
A specimen of a kind of jasper, known as limonite prase:
It’s difficult to find a limonite prase stone that is not chipped or has holes in it. The one above does have some small chunks out of it but it has interesting patterns within it.
I found a couple of pieces that are maybe worn down brick, a human artifact. This is one of them:
My afternoon fossick is reported next. An Index to this Series is here.
3 thoughts on “March 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 27, Fourteen Finds from Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, Morning of Sunday 30 March”