NOTE: As noted below, it has been reported that landowners are now refusing access across their land to all but one of the Slope Point beaches. Please seek permission if you want to visit them.
Slope Point is the southernmost tip of New Zealand’s South Island, 70 kilometres east of the city of Invercargill. It often attracts passing tourists who can park and then walk for 20 minutes across the paddocks to high cliffs overlooking the wild southern ocean. As one tourist website puts it, “It’s good to be able to say you went to the southernmost spot on the South Island!” There are a small number of beaches not far from the tourist carpark that have long been known to rockhounds. However, I have hesitated to add Slope Point to TumbleStone Two for two main reasons. First, in 2023, the land near the beaches changed hands and, as I noted in a Blog Post, the new owners have refused access to seemingly all but one of the beaches. This uncertainty about access permission meant that I have been cautious about publicising the beaches.
The second main reason I have hesitated to construct this Page is also access related. Getting to the Slope Point beaches is not easy. The rockhound needs to drive down a narrow winding gravel road. Upon arrival, there is little space for parking. And then there is a walk along farm tracks, through gates and often down steep slopes to get to a beach, a walk of a few hundred metres. The stone fossicker needs to have a good level of fitness and mobility and be able to carry their finds back to their vehicle. Also, once on a beach, you need to be alert and cautious. There are signs warning about the danger of rough seas especially when you are on rocks near the sea. A newspaper article in October 2023 mentioned that in the previous ten years there had been four water-related incidents resulting in fatalities within a five kilometres radius of Slope Point (Southland Times). When I visited the recently built shelter at the Slope Point tourist carpark in March 2025, I noted information panels recording the names of seven people who have lost their lives there since 1919. Fossickers also need to be alert to the possible presence of large sea lions which sometimes go up onto the beaches – these can be dangerous if disturbed. Despite these issues, Slope Point has historically been an important source of stones for New Zealand rockhounds and remains so.
Slope Point is located in the Catlins region, only about 10 kilometres east along the coast from the better known Curio Bay (see maps at top of this page). In-between the two lies Haldane Bay and Estuary. Slope Point and Curio Bay share much geologically though more is written about the latter. There, at Curio Bay, a rock platform allows tourists a close-up view of a fallen petrified forest from Jurassic times. As Wikipedia notes, these petrified logs “were buried by ancient volcanic mud flows and gradually replaced by silica to produce the fossils now exposed by the sea”. Mike Pole provides a geologist’s brief description of the petrified forest. The remnant of this fossil forest stretches from Curio Bay to Slope Point. It is that ancient volcanic activity that also produced many of the wonderful stones to be found on the Slope Point beaches, especially the black petrified wood, rhyolites and fossil tree ferns.
The beaches of Slope Point have long been known as fossicking areas for rockhounds but there has been very little published about them. They briefly figure in three books I have on New Zealand stone collecting. The first book to mention Slope Point that I have is Bill Myatt’s (1972) “Australian and New Zealand Gemstones: How and Where to Find Them” (see here for my Blog Post on this publication) (see photos below left). Towards the end of the book is a section on “Gemstone Localities” in Australia and New Zealand. The New Zealand part, pages 431 to 445, is written by Mrs A. Niethe. On page 442, in a section headed “Invercargill”, she states: “At Slope Point, down a narrow winding road just marked on the map, altered rhyolites can be found; Haldane is a source of agates, fossil wood, petrified palm and other goodies.”
The second mention in a book I have is another very brief one in Natalie Fernandez’s (1981) “The New Zealand Rockhound” (see here about the book) (photos above right). In her chapter on “Locations”, in the section for “Southland”, she has a short two sentence entry under “Slope Point”. The first sentence simply says “Similar to above”, which I presume refers to her previous entry on “Haldane Bay” which states: “Great variety – tumbling conglomerates, wood, agate, ponga. Altered rhyolites (flower gardens), orbicular jasper. Fossil fern leaves in rock layers. Agatised wood. Tobacco stone.” I don’t know what tobacco stone is, and Fernandez’s book doesn’t have an index for me to look up where else she mentions it. I have found only one small orbicular jasper at Slope Point, in June 2022. Fernandez’s second sentence for Slope Point is only: “There are three beaches to search.”
A third account of Slope Point for fossickers can be found in Jocelyn Thornton’s (1985) “Gemstones”, accessible online here (see photos above). The main part of this book deals with different types of New Zealand stones 0f interest to the stone collector and polisher. The last part of the book contains sections on seven beach areas in New Zealand, with photos of their stones of interest. The fifth beach area is Slope Point. “On the Southland coast between Waipapa Point and Haldane there are a few pebbly beaches visited by fishermen and rock collectors. The cliffs contain layers of conglomerates with pebbles which weather out and collect on the beaches. At first glance they appear dark, but closer examination reveals a multitude of subtle colours and patterns” (page 35 here). Thornton’s photos of Slope Point stones includes petrified punga, granite, amygdaloidal andesite, porphyries, agate, breccia and rhyolite.
I had personally become aware of Slope Point early on in my fossicking career, around 2016. I had read the books mentioned above and decided to go there when I could. I got the opportunity to visit Slope Point in 2018, driving to the tourist carpark and walking out to the Point. But I couldn’t see where to go to fossick for stones, there being high cliffs all around. I was very disappointed. In June 2019, I met a long-time collector Jack Geerlings at Gemstone Beach and visited his Winton home where he had a number of his polished Slope Point stones on display:
Seeing Jack’s stones made me even more keen to visit a Slope Point beach.
I eventually inquired about how to get to the Slope Point beaches on the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”. Oliver, a Slope Point local, responded and kindly offered to take me to a couple. This led to my first Slope Point fossick in March 2021. I have since visited a Slope Point beach four or five times each year, though since late 2023 I have gone to 0nly the one that does not have restricted access. Slope Point stones are unusual and interesting (see the photos of five of my Slope Point finds below), often different from the ones I find on Gemstone Beach and Kakanui, for instance.
Further Note on Access: New Zealand does not have the same kind of traditional system of public rights of way as, for example, England has. However, “unformed legal roads” (also known as “paper roads”) exist in New Zealand (see photos below). Such “roads” are legally defined but have not been built. Their legal status means that the public can follow them as routeways even though they pass through farmland. See www.herengaanuku.govt.nz/types-of-access/unformed-legal-roads/ and the link there “How to find unformed legal roads”. Such roads exist along the Slope Point coast.
Other details relating to access can be found in the Blog Post “Journeying to a Slope Point Beach”.
Other TumbleStoneTwo Pages on Slope Point:
SLOPE POINT: MY STONE FOSSICKING
HOME – FOSSICKING BEACHES – BEACH STONES – TUMBLE-POLISHING – ABOUT ME
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