“I made my way to a hill beside the sea, with salt in the air and sand on my feet… Now I’m far away, these memories still remain” (from “These Memories”, a song by Hollow Coves – see the end of the Post).
McCracken’s Rest is a roadside lookout just under eight kilometres west of Gemstone Beach. Perched on a hill on the edge of a cliff, the lookout provides a stunning view of Te Waewae Bay and the mountains of Western Fiordland (see photo below, far left). I have mixed memories from previous visits here. I made my first fossick in May 2019, when I walked as far westwards as the Te Waewae Lagoon, and found it disappointing, especially compared to Gemstone Beach. I had more productive fossicks in February 2021 (including seeing a large pink thulite – photo below, second from left) and June 2021 (see photo of a find below, second from right). My last visit there, in September 2024, resulted in a large purply-pink thulite find (photo below, far right) but not much else. As noted in these Posts, the beach is largely a continuation of Gemstone Beach, with many of the stone types being similar. However, there is much less diversity here and the stones tend to be more bashed around and less smooth.
Today I scrambled down the cliff just before noon on a cool sunny day with a little wind:
Details of what’s on the Rest’s information panel can be seen in this Post.
I fossicked westwards on the beach for a few hundred metres before returning, spending one and three-quarter hours there. No-one else was on the beach – it is not easily accessible due to the cliff. I came away with 39 finds, some of them very surprising – what is highly likely to be an agate/chalcedony, three poppy jaspers, a dendritic trace fossil stone, and other visually interesting pebbles.
When I first saw this stone, I thought it might be hydrogrossular garnet or quartz. Picking it up, it lacked the waxy feel of a garnet. However, it didn’t quite feel right for quartz – it felt too smooth:
Back at my accommodation, I examined the stone more closely and noticed a number of semi-circular marks on it. I knew I’ve seen those before but I couldn’t remember where. I was thinking maybe on quartzites. Then I saw a comment by Glenys Stace, in the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”, noting that a stone posted by someone had the typical marks of agate/chalcedony. I then remembered where I had seen them before – on agates I have found, such as near Moeraki Village in March 2021 (see towards the end of this Post), on a Birdlings Flat agate I tumble polished in May 2021, and on ones I found on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach in September 2024. In these Posts I say the marks are caused when a stone is slammed into rocks and other stones by waves and/or the current. However, it has been reported by a couple of people I know that the marks are made when a stone has been transported by a glacier. So there is a very good chance this stone is chalcedony – and I have not seen one before along the Te Waewae Bay coast.
The three poppy jaspers I found today – these were unexpected as I have not found these at McCracken’s Rest before:
I also picked up the following small red hematite jasper but it is not a poppy one:
I saw very few trace fossils stones and collected only one – it has a faint trace but, more interestingly, a faint line of dendrites:
The term “dendrite” comes from the Greek word for “tree”, referring to its branching habit. In geology, dendrites are thin, branching crystals, often of some variety of manganese oxide, that grow over a surface in a rock or mineral. They can be found in cracks, as with this stone, or along bedding planes. See “D is for Dendrites”, the second part of this Post. For examples of dendrites in some Ward Beach stones, see the end of this Post. Dendrites are often given as examples of “pseudofossils”, natural objects that may be mistaken for fossils (of a plant leaf, for example).
Four other visually interesting pebbles I collected:
“These Memories” by Hollow Coves (2017)
We found our place
On the branch of an old gum tree
Our feet would sway
To a voice in the breeze
And birds would sing
On the banks of a narrow stream
These memories will stay with me
We made our way
To a hill beside the sea
With salt in the air
And sand on our feet
We felt the sun
As it burnt upon our skin
These memories will stay with me
Now I’m far away
These memories still remain
Now I’m far away
You stay with me the same…
The next Post in this Series is “Puffer Jacket and Woollen Hat and Scarf: A Winter Morning Fossick on Gemstone Beach, Thursday 14 August”. An Index to the Series is here.
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