Corina lives just outside of Orepuki, a couple of kilometres from Gemstone Beach. I had previously messaged her a few times about the stones of Gemstone Beach as she is a member of the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”. I then met Corina briefly on the beach during a fossick with Chrissy in September 2024. She mentioned that she had once found three small sapphires which she had donated to the Riverton Museum (see photo below, left). An old Gemstone Beach Hertiage Trails sign (photo below, centre) mentioned sapphires, as does page 8 of Jocelyn Thornton’s “Gemstones” (see photo below, right). In June 2019, I wote a Blog Post titled “The Elusive Sapphire of Gemstone Beach”. Chrissy and I are now working on a photo book about Gemstone Beach stones, using photos of stones we have found. However, we have not found a Gemstone Beach sapphire so I have been hunting out photos of other people’s finds. I messaged Corina a month ago to confirm that the three stones in the museum had been found by her. She mentioned she had another one still in her possession. She happily agreed I could photograph it when I was in Southland this month.
Corina is fascinated by stones and she has collected specimens from a number of places, not just Gemstone Beach. Although she has a lot from Gemstone Beach! When I visited her four days ago, I took photos of four of her stones. The first was a small sapphire, the size of my thumbnail. It is dark blue and recognisably a Gemstone Beach sapphire with its rich deep blue colour:
When I wet the stone (see third row of photos above) the water moved off it quite quickly. This is a characteristic of hydrogrossular garnet. Interestingly, the photo of a Gemstone Beach sapphire on the website of the Otago Rock and Mineral Club states that “The blue colour is sapphire which is combined within the structure of a hydrogrossular garnet”.
Corina showed me two other small stones with a little bit of blue in them which is also likely to be inside hydrogrossular garnet. This is the first:
The second has a faint pink tinge:
The fourth find that Corina showed me was one from the day she met Chrissy and me on the beach. It is very black, and is highly likely to be a hydrogrossular garnet – it has a very smooth, slightly waxy feel. Black is a very unusual colour for this type of stone:
I am grateful to Corina for letting me take these photos and use them on TumbleStone Blog.
