Apologies to those following this Series for the late publication of this Post. When I got home from my trip, I had a bad cold which took a few days to ease. Then I spent over a week working through a reviewer’s detailed comments on a draft of the book on Gemstone Beach stones that Chrissy and I are preparing.
I arrived at Ward Beach in Southern Marlborough at 2.40pm. It was only eight degrees, with a cold breeze, though it was sunny. A few people were around. I passed a couple of cyclists on the road out there, and two or three camper vans were parked in the camping area behind the beach. Later a man arrived to gather kelp that had washed up. I walked south to the Flaxbourne River mouth, a distance of 400 metres – the river was too wide and deep to cross. The waves were powerful and ferocious and swept swiftly up the beach (see the fourth and fifth photos below). I made sure I kept well clear of them.
The sun was harsh and low, making it difficult to spot details in the stones when walking over them. The following are ten of my finds from today.
My favourite find today is this small stone with tiny sparkling spots in it which turn out to be very small square crystals of some kind:
I have found at least three of these before, one on my way south a month ago, another in February 2025, the first in February 2024. I wonder if the crystals might be pyrite, given their cuboid character.
Two other black stones with white crystals:
There’s a good chance these could be dolerite with feldpar crystals in them.
A stone that reverses the proportion of black and white – a white stone with small black spots in it:
A jasper find:
I recently learned that jasper can sometimes be silicified rhyolite. Hot, silica-rich groundwater can move through rhyolitic rock, turning parts of it into microcrystalline quartz. Silicified rhyolite can even give rise to poppy jasper, and is the origin of ocean jasper.
A veined limestone of a type that I always find attractive, though the soft rock needs very careful tumbling:
A limestone with dendrites:
Dendrites are thin lines, often branching, of tiny dark crystals, usually of some variety of manganese oxide, that grow over a rock’s surface – see Mindat.org. Other dendritic specimens I have found on Ward Beach can be seen towards the end of “Selection of Tumbled Ward Beach Stones: Part 3 – Stones With Veins; Stones With Dendrites”.
As usual, I kept a look out for trace fossils in limestime. One I found was in a rough-feeling stone – they are usually very smooth – and the definition of its trace seemed sharper than normal:
Two other trace fossil stones, the first one showing a displacement across it (sometimes called an “earthquake stone”), the second containing some criss-crossing of traces (usually the traces run parallel to each other):
For more on these trace fossils, see “Selection of Tumbled Ward Beach Stones: Part 1 – Trace Fossils in Limestone”.
Ian and Ronnie of the Flaxbourne Motels always show an interest in the stones I find at nearby Ward Beach. I have given them some that I have tumble polished. Ian is very good at making and crafting stuff. He once set a handful of my polished stones in a couple of wooden table tops. Today, they showed me how Ian had mounted seven of the stones I had given them in a glass-fronted frame, using identifications I had given to Ronnie the last time I visited:
A really interesting idea, effectively done.
The next Post in this Series covers a second Ward Beach fossick (not yet available). An Index to the Series is available here.
