I have a booking on a Cook Strait ferry for tomorrow but the ship has been out of action for a couple of weeks. It was supposed to have started sailing yesterday but cancelled again. Today it looks like it is due to start up again and, if so, I should be lucky tomorrow. I had managed to book an alternative with another ferry company for Sunday and the Flaxbourne Motel owners at Ward, Ronnie and Ian, have very kindly made allowances for me to stay until then if need be. So today’s trip to Ward Beach may be my last fossick for this trip, or it may not.
I arrived at Ward Beach at 12.30 pm at low tide. It was sunny, 18 degrees, with only a light breeze. More than a dozen camper vans and cars were there. However, during the nearly two hours I was there, no one else was on the beach in front of the carpark or to the south, just over the Flaxbourne River, where I walked.
It was a typical Ward Beach fossick though I was surprised not to spot more trace fossil limestone pebbles. This Series of Posts features the kind of stones I have found most often on this beach. Here are 15 of my finds from this afternoon.
This first one is my favourite – a small stone but with really interesting features and colours:
Occasional jaspers can be found on Ward Beach. Many are plain and uninteresting to me, but now and again a fascinating one appears:
This jasper has a bright white vein which may be chalcedony (agate):
I keep a look out for limestone stones with white veins, and found these three:
This one has dendrites in it (see the second half of this Post for other Ward Beach examples):
I also look for brecciated limetone (complex veins) and sometimes these might have some flint in them (the clearer brown patches in this case):
More examples of this can be seen in this Post.
Some limestone along this coast can be yellow and/or blue. This one appears to be brecciated, has a thin black vein and an intriguing white feature:
A dark red stone that I initially thought could be a jasper but I think it is probably some kind of igneous stone – the tiny crystals and patches of mineral in it are interesting:
Another igneous stone, a type quite common on New Zealand beaches, probably a porphyritic basalt with plagioclase feldspar phenocrysts – the different crystal shapes always fascinate me:
This stone is predominantly light in colour (probably quartz) with black crystals:
Finally, three specimens of trace fossils in limestone:
That night, I met up with Katinka, Guy and their daughter, all keen rockhounds and occasional readers of this blog. They were staying two doors along from me at the motel. On my way to catch the ferry the next day, I stopped off briefly at Ward Beach again and was soon joined by them for about 20 minutes. The tide was not good for finding wet stones however and little eventuated from that fossick. I made it safely home to Whanganui that night.
The Index to this Series can be found here.
