March 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 28, Another Eight from Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, Afternoon of Sunday 30 March

Walking north along the beach.

My Kakanui finds this afternoon.

Quartzite?

Red quartzite.

I went back to the beach at Kakanui for an hour this afternoon in the cold and wind again. It was just prior to high tide – the waves seemed a big bigger than usual. No-one else was on the beach. I walked north from the carpark, along a line of wetted stones.

The waves wetting the stones at high tide. Photo taken on my phone.

Walking north along the beach.

Some good patches of stones.

Seadown Beach stones, Kakanui.

My Kakanui finds this afternoon.

Below are eight of my finds from this afternoon. The first one caught my eye because of the small light yellow patches in it. Up close, it has the characteristics of quartzite but the breccia-like appearance is very unusual in my experience. It looks like it contains tiny fragments of various rocks yet tiny clear quartz crystals seem to be distributed relatively evenly throughout it:

When I saw the next stone on the beach, I thought ot might be an agate, largely because of the layers within it:

Quartzite?

Edge of stone.

However, it does not have the usual irregular bright white surface patches often associated with agate. There was some discussion of the stone when I posted it on the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”, with one comment made that it was most likely a kind of quartzite. I agree.

I found another piece of petrified wood, similar in character to this morning’s find:

Dry petrified wood stone.

Wet petrified wood stone.

Other side, dry.

Other side, wet.

Two of the red stones I collected this afternoon, the first a jasper and the second a quartzite:

Jasper with veins.

Red quartzite.

Finally, three different kinds of limestone stones from the beach:

Part 29 is “Stones, Surfers and a Buzz of Insects at Midday on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach”. An Index to this Series is here.

Author: tumblestoneblog

Retired Academic, male, living in the New Zealand countryside near Whanganui with his wife as well as Jasper the dog, Fluffy the cat, Dancer and Penny, the horses, and a shed half-full of stones. Email john.tumblestone@gmail.com. View all posts by tumblestoneblog