I wrote this Review for “StoneSpeak”, the Newsletter of the Southland Geological and Lapidary Club, and it appeared there in June 2025. The following is a slightly fuller version. The Club’s website is here and its Facebook Page is here.
Peter Ballance’s excellent “New Zealand Geology: An Illustrated Guide” was published as an e-book in 2017. It is available for free download from the Geoscience Society of New Zealand here. It is not a book to help you identify a stone – rather, it is a consideration of New Zealand’s geology within a tectonic plate framework. It can be patchy in its coverage, due to how it came to be published (after the author’s death, before he had completed it), but it contains numerous small sections and diagrams which provide insights into a range of geological matters. These include the weathering of greywacke to clay (page 57), the formation of pillow lava (pages 70-71), rhyolite volcanism and ignimbrite (pages 127-129), the Moeraki boulders (pages 263-264), Curio Bay (page 275), the tectonic zone from Te Waewae Bay to Te Anau (page 286), and Nelson’s Boulder Bank (page 377).
Peter Ballance was an Englishman who came to teach at New Zealand’s University of Auckland in 1961. He taught geology there until his retirement in 1998. He died in 2009. A 2004 article on Ballance in the “New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics” states: “In New Zealand geological circles, Peter is well regarded for his high standards, the personification of the perfect gentleman who has always shared his data and knowledge with anyone who is interested, and being scrupulously fair in his appraisal or criticism of the work of others.”
“New Zealand Geology: An Illustrated Guide” was Ballance’s retirement project. However, the final draft was not quite complete before his death and other people compiled, formatted and edited his writings and updated his illustrations and maps. The book describes aspects of the geology of New Zealand in some depth, with efforts being made to communicate clearly to the general reader. The text is accompanied by over 100 colour photographs and a comparable number of colour maps and illustrations. A review in the Geoscience Society Newsletter makes the following observations: “It is written with very clear explanations, using non-technical language and supplemented with many excellent diagrams, maps, and photos, making the content accessible to interested non-specialists. At the same time, with nearly 400 pages of densely packed information, this is not a light read, but something to invest considerable time and effort in. Anyone who does so will be richly rewarded with fascinating insights into a myriad of processes and events that have created our multifaceted landscape.” I wouldn’t say all the language is non-technical – some effort is required at times to follow the use of geological terms.
The book is in three parts. The first part is an introductory section dealing with the dating of rocks, plate tectonic processes and the New Zealand plate boundary, followed by an overview of the development of the continent of Zealandia. Part two describes eight geological regions of New Zealand’s North Island with Part Three consisting of nine chapters dealing with the South Island’s regional geology. Chapter 16 is on Southland and Stewart Island/Rakiura but is perhaps the most disappointing chapter in the book – it feels underdone to me, perhaps incomplete. But this is the kind of book that I go to from time to time to clarify some of the context to the stones I find on local beaches. Unfortunately, there is no index provided, so it’s a matter of hunting through the pages for what might be relevant. But every now and then, I strike gold there. And I find myself reading more, purely out of interest.
The next Review in this Series is of the New Zealand “Geotrips” website.
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