August 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 16, Chrissy’s Large Thulite from Papatotara Beach, Saturday 23 August

 

Today was my last fossicking day on the south coast before heading back north. Chrissy and I had decided to visit Gemstone Beach this afternoon but the morning was so nice that we popped down to the beach in front of her home at Papatotara. It is on the Te Waewae Bay coast, some 30 kilometres by road to the west of Gemstone Beach. I had visited there a couple of times a week ago. We got to the beach at 10.45am and fossicked in an easterly direction, leaving one and three-quarters of an hour later. We took Ohla with us. I got a good photo of her before dirt got onto my camera lens, unnoticed, and ruined all but one of my other beach photos. I collected just over 30 stones. Chrissy found a nice large thulite which she generously gave to me.

Chrissy’s thulite has gorgeous pink patches. Unfortunately, such stones don’t always tumble polish well.

This black and white stone was my favourite find today – there’s a quality about the white in it that I find very interesting. But I don’t know what type of stone this is:

I picked up this next stone because its fragmented character makes for interesting patterns. It’s probably a mudstone of some kind, I think:

Two small stones, the first predominantly white but with a couple of black patches, the second being much darker but with some crystals that are likely to be translucent:

A nice trace fossil stone I found:

I picked up one small poppy jasper:

Finally, three more of my finds:

The next Post is about a possible application to “mine gemstones” from Gemstone Beach. The Post after that (not yet available) describes my second fossick of the day for 23 August, at Gemstone Beach, my last one there this trip. An Index to the Series is here.