March 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 32, In Retrospect

This Post looks back upon my most recent stone collecting trip as presented in the preceding 31 Parts. All the photos below come from that Series, the Index to which starts here.

I am able to drive south to collect beach stones two or three times a year, one of the benefits of retirement and reasonably good health. I usually spend three or four weeks based on the south coast, visiting Gemstone Beach, Slope Point and Riverton Aparima. On the way down and then back home again, I drop in on Kakanui and Ward Beach, sometimes Timaru and maybe another beach or two as well. I am indebted to Petra, my wife, who holds the home fort while I am away, and to Ray for allowing me to stay at his Riverton crib, making these trips possible. I am also grateful to those fellow fossickers who accompany me on the beach or who I meet there.

I tend to restrict myself to beaches I know well, that are likely to have stones that are interesting and that will tumble polish nicely. During this trip of 37 days, I had a total of 32 fossicks – 16 on Gemstone Beach, eight on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, two fossicks each at Slope Point, Riverton Aparima, and Ward Beach, and one fossick each at Timaru and near Kekerengu on the Kaikoura Coast. I calculate that I spent nearly 70 hours on beaches, enjoying the environment and collecting stones.

On these beaches, I always stumble across stones that surprise me with their beauty, their intricate patterns, and the amazing sights that are revealed by close-up photos. The highlights of this visit include the following finds. Links are made to the Posts in which the stones feature. It’s difficult to select the highlights as every stone I collect has caught my eye on the beach. I’ve managed to whittle it down to the 65 stones featured below.

The find I most value from this trip is a very small orbicular jasper from Gemstone Beach – the first time I have found such a stone with tiny white orbs:

Among the other surprising and delightful finds were some very small dark red jaspers, their beauty fully revealed only by the photos. This one is from Slope Point:

This one is from Gemstone Beach:

From Kakanui:

Another from Gemstone Beach:

Again, Gemstone Beach:

Finally, also found on Gemstone Beach:

I am attracted to stones with a lot of detail within them. I really like the patterns in these two very similar Gemstone Beach stones:

A kind of similar type of pattern in a stone from Slope Point, but a very different colour:

Perhaps the most interesting veined stone I found is this one from Gemstone Beach:

A colourful stone from Slope Point:

Another colourful Slope Point stone, a sedimentary one:

An unusual stone with bright white in it, from Gemstone Beach:

Another interesting patchy white stone, this one a breccia from Slope Point:

This interesting patterned and very smooth stone is from Gemstone Beach:

A specimen of the intriguing bryozoa fossil stone from Kakanui:

And a similar stone from Slope Point, found there for the first time in my experience:

This Gemstone Beach find has a really interesting pattern in it, and it might be a hydrogrossular garnet:

During the same fossick, I found this stone, the most impressive of the many breccia I found:

Maybe the best of the other breccias with epidote in them, also from Gemstone Beach:

Though this light green breccia from Gemstone Beach is also very attractive:

Epidote in a type of quartzite from Kakanui:

And a small very intense green stone from Gemstone Beach:

From Kakanui, an unusual colour – dark brown – of a kind of quartzite found there which usually comes in yellow or light-grey:

Another unusual Kakanui quartzite, with breccia-like “spots”:

At Kakanui, I always look out for limestone pebbles with fossils in them – this one is a great example of the type:

A small Ward Beach speckly stone that turned out to contain tiny regular-sided crystals:

A Slope Point stone with lots of different things in it:

A type of iron-stained quartz with spectacular patterns, from Gemstone Beach:

A smaller quartz, again from Gemstone Beach, more sugary but with a similar range of hues:

And a variation on the same theme from the same beach – quartz and brown hues:

A Gemstone Beach find that I really liked, though the photo fails to do it justice:

From the Beach Past the Back Beach at Riverton Aparima:

The most interesting argillite stone I found on Gemstone Beach:

The most unusual pink-type stone I collected, found on Gemstone Beach:

Gemstone Beach’s poppy jaspers are always a delight to find – here are six collected on this trip:

I am always excited to find petrified wood. At the start of my fossicking career, it was the main type of stone I wanted to find. This trip, I found the following pieces on (in chronological order) Slope Point, Gemstone Beach, Slope Point, Kakanui and Kakanui:

Among the trace fossils in argillite stones collected from Gemstone Beach were these (the third one below was given to me by Lee Gibbs, and Chrissy also often gives me trace fossil stones she finds while in my company):

And two of the larger trace fossils in limestone found on Ward Beach:

The two most interesting beach agates I found this trip, from Slope Point and Kakanui:

A stone with a glassy green character, maybe chromite in quartz, found on Gemstone Beach:

And, finally, five of the hydrogrossular garnets from Gemstone Beach:

The tumble polishing begins…

An Index to this Series starts here.