Today I visited the beach at the end of Scarborough Road, just south of Timaru – for background on this beach, see Timaru South. I was accompanied by Sascha, a Timaru resident and fellow rockhound – see this Post (January 2022) about her wire wrapping of stones, and this Post (February 2022) about a previous fossick with her and her friend Pauline. We spent about 90 minutes at low tide on about 200 metres of the stony beach, between the end of Scarborough Road and Mutu Mutu Point (Jack’s Point).
We arrived just after 4pm. At some point I noticed one other person come onto the beach but apart from that we were the only ones there during this time – although there were some walkers and cyclists using the nearby track that runs parallel to the beach. We both found lots of interesting stones. I came away with more than enough for a couple of tumble barrels. Due to wet and cloudy weather, I was not able to take photos of my finds until Saturday morning.
The type of stone I most admire from Timary South is green quartzite. Today I collected about 15 of various sizes, and Sascha found some as well.
Among the other interesting finds was this pale green porphyry (I also picked up a smaller one like this):
It could be a breccia/conglomerate but I have seen large white crystals in stones before, usually feldspar.
The tiny markings in this next stone are new to me. I suspect they are crystals, and the stone might have a quartz base, but I’m not sure:
Another stone with tiny markings that caught my eye was this one, which I thought might be a kind of quartzite, but I’ve also not seen anything like it before:
As is often the case in rockhounding, something not seen before crops up every now and then.
The next two stones have similar elongated shapes, the first being a very nice brecciated jasper, the second is maybe a creamy quartzite?? with interesting patches:
Finally, two heavily veined stones, the first a quartzite, the second could also be a quartzite but it was the grid pattern that caught my eye:
My next fossick will be at Kakanui in North Otago. An Index to this Series is here.
One thought on “March 2026 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 2, Timaru South, Thursday 12 March”