Month: June 2026

June-July 2026 South Island Trip – Part 2, A Bitterly Cold Kakanui Fossick, Thursday 25 June

I arrived at Seadown Beach, Kakanui, just south of Oamaru, on a bitterly cold afternoon – it was six degrees with a stiff southerly wind, and rain showers were threatening. My motel room was not quite yet available so I decided to spend half an hour on the beach, despite the conditions. I put on my big coat, my woollen scarf and hat, donned a pair of fingerless gloves, and ventured out. It was near high tide. There were very few stones on the beach.

Seadown Beach, Kakanui, on a cold afternoon, looking south.
Not many stones on the beach.
Looking north, in the direction I walked.
The scattering of stones I checked out as I walked north.

I walked north for maybe 400 metres, scanning some thinly scattered stones as well as the occasional patch, picking up one or two here and there. I passed a standing stone – limestone – that someone had recently erected. The very cold conditions didn’t encourage a long walk, so I turned around and headed back to the car. Just at that point, some freezing rain started to come down. So the second part of the fossick was definitely the coldest, walking into the wind and (light but cold) rain. I collected 18 hard-won finds, seven of which are featured below. Photos of them were taken the next morning, when the sun was still low in the sky.

Recently erected standing stone.
The dark clouds eventually delivered some freezing drops of rain.
My 18 finds this afternoon.

I always enjoy finding a fossiliferous limestone pebble, especially with varied small shell fossils in it:

Fossiliferous limestone.

Other examples of this kind of limestone from this beach can be found here and here.

One of the most common interesting stones here are yellow/orange quartzites. Here are two I collected:

Quartzite.
A second quartzite find.

And a quartzite of a different colour:

Quartzite.

I picked up two small hematite jaspers this afternoon, the most interesting one being the first of the two:

Small hematite jasper.
The second small hematite jasper.

Finally, a button of cloudy quartz, which turns out to be transparent when held up to the light:

Cloudy quartz.
Cloudy quartz held up to light.

After returning to the car and starting to thaw out, I decided to check out the new Kakanui bridge, mentioned in my Blog Post of 27 August 2025. A new single-lane structure has replaced the old one, its construction having disrupted traffic between the two parts of the town for a period. The local fire truck flashed its lights at me when I was spotted taking a photo from the north side of the new bridge (from well off the roadway). 

The new Kakanui bridge.
The old and the new bridges.
Local fire truck crossing the new Kakanui bridge.

Next stop will be the south coast of Southland.

An Index to this Series of Posts is available here. The next Post is on my first fossick this Trip on Gemstone Beach. 

June-July 2026 South Island Trip – Part 1, Six Finds from Ward Beach, Tuesday 23 June

I left home in Whanganui yesterday to catch a Bluebridge Cook Strait ferry in Wellington. The crossing was nice and smoooth, and during it I watched the All Whites World Cup football game against Egypt (the All Whites won the first half but lost the second, and the game). On this trip, I will be visiting favourite South Island beaches but have two other important tasks. Firstly, I will be working with Chrissy on an advanced draft of our book on the stones of Gemstone Beach. Secondly, I will be taking part in the Open Day of the Southland Geological and Lapidary Club in Invercargill on 11 July.

My first stop, as always, is Ward in Marlborough, checking into Ian and Ronnie’s Flaxbourne Motels for two nights. Unfortunately I just missed Lee and Shona, who I had previously met in March 2023 and again in March 2025 – they are going south to do some house-sitting in Canterbury. Today I visited Ward Beach for an hour at high tide, during a cool sunny afternoon with a stiff wind blowing. I walked south to the mouth of the Flaxbourne River and back, collecting 21 stones. I worked hard at not picking up too many as I am on my way south and they will be travelling all of the way with me. 

Ward Beach, looking south-west from the carpark.
The sea has eaten into the stone beach, leaving a steep drop in places. Looking north.
Ward Beach stones today – lots of good sized ones on the surface.
Ward Beach stones, wet from the waves.
Today’s collected 21.

 I visited at high tide because the larger stones, most suitable for tumble polishing, tend to be found (wet) at the high tide mark. Today there were lots of such stones there, more than usual it seemed, though the strong waves sweeping up the gravel meant I had to take care during the fossick. I didn’t want to get caught by a wave half way down the bank – and I didn’t.

Six of today’s finds are featured below. The first is the largest trace fossil (in limestone) I have seen on Ward Beach:    

Trace fossil in limestone.

The second is a small white stone (again limestone?) with dendrites, thin, branching lines of crystals, often of some variety of manganese oxide (or iron), that grow over a surface in a rock or mineral:     

Dendritic stone.

Four other examples of Ward Beach dendritic stones can be found here.

My third featured find is one I find fascinating, having collected a couple on previous fossicks (e.g., in February 2025) – the tiny white crystals in it are hardly discernable to the naked eye:    

Tiny white crystals.

I also found the following type of brecciated stone to be fascinating – it may be limestone. Brecciation refers to the fragmentation and re-cementing of a stone, often with something like quartz or chalcedony in the gaps:    

Brecciated limestone?

There’s an explanation of breccia at the start of this Post (in the discussion of Stone #6).

I collected the fifth featured stone because of the two different textures in it, arising from the different sizes of its black crystals – I find such a contrast to be interesting: 

I suspect the final stone is quartz with iron oxide colouring it. However it caught my eye because the colour seems muted:

I continue south tomorrow morning. My next fossick will be at Kakanui in North Otago. An Index to this Series of Posts can be found here. 

A Review of the “Geological Digressions” Website

This Review originally appeared in the June 2026 edition of “StoneSpeak”, the Newsletter of the Southland Geological and Lapidary Club. Below is a slightly expanded version. An Index to this Series of Reviews is here. The Southland Club’s website is here and its Facebook Page is here.

When I was looking for good introductory material about trace fossils three years ago, I came across an excellent article “Someone passed this way: Tracks, trails, impressions, and footprints” on the “Geological Digressions” website. I liked the turn of phrase used there: “Trace fossils are what is left of the activity of some ancient critter”. It turned out that the site is produced by a retired New Zealand geologist, Brian Ricketts.  

Home Page of “Geological Digressions” http://www.geological-digressions.com.
Trace Fossils article on “Geological Digressions” http://www.geological-digressions.com/someone-passed-this-way-tracks-trails-impressions-and-footprints
From Trace Fossils article on “Geological Digressions” http://www.geological-digressions.com/someone-passed-this-way-tracks-trails-impressions-and-footprints

Ricketts first studied geology at the University of Auckland in the early 1970s and did his doctoral degree in the Canadian Arctic. He then worked for the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) for a few years. “I quit the GSC in 1997 and moved with my Canadian family back to Aotearoa–New Zealand to work a 4-year teaching stint at the University of Waikato.” But “with an evolving disenchantment of academia, I decided to form my own consulting company in 2005 – a company of one – and never looked back!” (quotes taken from “A Geological Life” on the website). During his time as a geologist, he also worked in Hungary, Chile, Australia, USA, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Retired now, Ricketts spends time on his Waikato organic kiwifruit orchard but also continues the development of “Geological Digressions”. More details on his background can be found in “A Geological Life”.

Ricketts started his website in December 2015. He states there that “I do this for the love of it. I do not receive any remuneration for the site (and I don’t advertise). The website is not attached or beholden to any organization.” The main part of the site is a “Virtual Classroom” containing material on sedimentology, stratigraphy, volcanology, geological structure, sedimentary basins, petrography and petrology – this is aimed primarily at university undergraduate students. There is a lot of material here – 23 Main Sections, each with numerous articles – and often useful links are made to other sources as well as related pages in “Geological Digressions”.  

“Virtual Classroom” Page http://www.geological-digressions.com/how-to-do-field-tasks.
“Bivalve morphology for sedimentologists” http://www.geological-digressions.com/bivalve-morphology-for-sedimentologists
“Ripple Lithofacies – Ubiquitous Bedforms” http://www.geological-digressions.com/ripple-lithofacies-ubiquitous-bedforms.

For example, in the Virtual Classroom Main Section “Minerology of Sandstones”, there are 20 articles, one of which is on “Bivalve morphology for sedimentologists”. It looks at bivalve fossils in detail, including their external and internal morphology, and shell orientation, with well-labelled illustrations. One of the other Main Sections is “Lithofacies”. Lithofacies refers to the physical and compositional characteristics of a sedimentary rock unit or sediment layer. There are 41 articles in the Section, one of them being “Ripple Lithofacies – Ubiquitous Bedforms”. It describes how ripples are formed on sedimentary surfaces and their different characteristics.   

This “Virtual Classroom” is an excellent resource for people who have not formally studied geology – here you can get access to some of the material that is presented to university students. Yes, it can be technical, but it is well presented and a treasure for the keen learner.    

Other articles in “Geological Digressions” are written with non-specialist or non-technical people in mind. Across the top of the site’s pages are links to four groups of articles: Glossary, Atlas of Sediments, Ancient Earth, and More. There are 11 glossaries (alphabetical lists of technical terms with their meanings), on topics including Stratigraphy, Sedimentary Structures, Volcanics, and Palaeontology. Alongside the explanations of key terms are links to any website articles relevant to them. “Atlas of Sediments” is a collection of photos that Ricketts has accumulated. There are 24 groupings here. One of them, for example, is “Atlas of Trace Fossils” which has 33 photos of different trace fossils, some from New Zealand.

One of the Glossaries http://www.geological-digressions.com/glossary-paleontology.
“Ancient earth. 2 How old is it?” http://www.geological-digressions.com/ancient-earth-how-old-is-it.
Sandstone formation http://www.geological-digressions.com/from-sand-to-stone-sandstone-a-remarkable-transformation.

The “Ancient Earth” heading takes you to 13 articles. The second one asks how old the Earth is. Here, Ricketts looks at a number of people in history who have attempted answers. He then refers to the search for the oldest rocks on Earth and what they imply. Another “Ancient Earth” article is on stromatolites, the earliest physical life form on Earth. Under the “More” heading are 14 other topics, some of which contain a lot of different articles. For example, “Interpreting Earth” has 28 articles, ranging from how sand gets turned into stone to understanding how a fossil forest in the Arctic has survived.

As you can see, “Geological Digressions” is large, detailed, diverse and wide-ranging, containing both technical and non-technical geology-related information broadly defined. The Home Page refers to “436 articles” being there. In general, these are well-written and have lots of interesting detail and illustrations. You can use the “Search” function to look for something specific. Or you can take a stroll along its many corridors, exploring whatever takes your fancy.

The next Review in this Series is of Three Kiwi “YouTube” Rockhounds. The Series Index is here.