NOTE: Parts 4 & 5 of this Series have not yet been written, but I wanted to post this out of sequence as a number of people have expressed interest in it. This is a slightly expanded (and more coherent) version of my talk at the Book Launch of “What’s This Stone? A Photographic Collection of Finds from Gemstone Beach”, co-authored by myself and Chrissy Lampitt. The Launch took place at the monthly meeting of the Southland Geological and Lapidary Club in Invercargill. About 25 people were in attendance, a nice size for the event. Thanks to all there for their warm reception. The book sells for $35 (add $7.50 for non-rural postage in NZ, add $10 for rural addresses – two or more books to the same address will also cost only one lot of postage). It is available now from me (john.tumblestone@gmail.com) and Chrissy (tumbleandpolish@gmail.com). It’s 49 pages long and 230mm by 155mm in size.
“What’s This Stone?”
This is a question that Chrissy and I have sometimes been asked on Gemstone Beach, by people who visit there and are really not sure what they should be looking for. They don’t know what a “gemstone” might look like. We also see people there with the small A4-sized laminated poster from the Riverton Aparima Museum, “Gemstone Beach – Sample Stones” (see below) – which was probably great when it was a large poster but the reduced size limits its usefulness. Its photos are relatively small and far from sharp, not showing key details such as the traces in the “Fossil Worm Castings”. It is also difficult to distinguish, for example, between what seem to be similar stones labeled “Porphyry”, “Spotted Argillite” and “Altered Volcanic & Filled Bubbles”.
Chrissy said one day that we should do something better. I thought about it, and after a while said we really needed a book. No-one else was doing it, so after some procrastination, we decided to give it a go. It took us a year to finish the task. Fools rush in, sometimes slowly, where angels fear to tread.
“A Photographic Collection of Finds from Gemstone Beach”
We are rockhounds, not geologists. We have “finds”, not a systematic collection of well-identified representative specimens. And we pick up stones we like the look of, that we want to polish, many of which we don’t know the identity of. It’s kind of a very random set that ends up in our collection bags. I’ve been walking Gemstone Beach on and off for nine years, Chrissy for seven. My TumbleStone Blog has lots of photos of stones I’ve found on Gemstone Beach, and over the past few years I’ve done a bit of research and writing on the identification of many of them. But all those images and information are scattered throughout the blog, and it’s not easy to find something among the many Posts which are ordered chronologically. A book provides the opportunity to put them into an easily retrievable and coherent form. And we’ve designed the book (type of paper and binding) so it can be taken to the beach and easily consulted there. I supplied the text and photos, and Chrissy has the skills and creativity and energy and persistence and patience and diplomacy to take them and construct a book, and take it through to publication. She also knows Gemstone Beach and its stones really well and so could check that the text was on track. We have been aware of Jocelyn Thornton’s “Gemstones” (1985) as a pioneer of a photo book of New Zealand stones – it has text and photos of different types of stones and also a few beaches (see below, left). It’s been invaluable to many rockhounds. We wanted to focus just on the one beach we know well, organise our book by stone type, and feature photos of individual stones. Ours is a self-published effort – the book is not produced by a commercial publisher. Chrissy put it together and sent it to a printer.
Book Contents – Lots of Photos of Stones!
After a five-page Introduction about Gemstone Beach and stones and photographs, we have entries for 20 stone types. Each entry has some introductory text about the stone type followed by a number of photographs of specimens (see the pages on amygdaloidal stones above). Altogether, there are photos of 337 stones in the book. Of the 37 pages that make up the entries, text amounts to 11 pages and photos amount to 26 pages. So at least readers can enjoy looking at some photos of interesting stones if they find some of the writing less compelling. The entry on “Sapphire” is the only one where we don’t have photos of finds made by us, but there we have photos of Gemstone Beach sapphires found by other people.
Assistance, But the Errors are Ours
Our knowledge about Gemstone Beach stones arises from many different sources, including books and websites, fellow rockhounds and members of online rockhound groups. After we had produced a near final draft of the book, we approached Tina Hughes, a friend and fellow Southland Club member, to proof-read it for us. She brought some issues to our attention and helped us improve the book’s readability. Then we sent the draft to the geologist Nick Mortimer who knows southern geology very well. He is one of the authors of “A Photographic Guide to Rocks and Minerals of New Zealand” (2011). He was Geoff Chapple’s Southland guide for Chapple’s book “Terrain: Travels Through a Deep Landscape” (2015). Nick also wrote the Geotrips page on Gemstone Beach. We asked him to comment on the geological content of the text. He was very generous with his response, sending us four pages of detailed notes. I broke his comments down into 51 different points and carefully worked through each one. We followed many of his suggestions but not all. As we say at the end of the book, the information and views in it remain ours (John and Chrissy’s), along with any misconceptions and errors.
Identification is an Ongoing Process
It has taken us some years to identify some stones, and even then we can’t be sure we’ve got it right. Identification is an ongoing learning process, and sometimes we change our minds in the light of further information. So this book is kind of a report on what we currently think. It’s by no means meant to be the final word.
A Blog Versus a Book
I started TumbleStone Blog partly as a record of my stone collection activities. Taking photos of stones I find and then posting them on the Blog means that I can always go and look at them again, even if I lose them or give them away. Whenever I do some research on a stone, I can post that on the Blog and refer back to it to refresh my memory. There are a number of advantages to a Blog compared to a book: new photos and information can be added regularly; a range of media can be included in Posts, from drone videos of beaches to music from YouTube songs; links to other online sources can be added; the sheer amount of material that can be included is very great; a lot of different beaches and stones and topics can be covered. So what are the advantages of a book like “What’s This Stone?” In a book, all the material on a particular topic is gathered together in one place – no need to waste time looking back through hundreds of Blog Posts. A book’s focus is more narrow but much easier to access. A book is in some circumstances easier to consult than the internet, especially on the beach. A book is not subject to the vagaries of internet reception, nor to the small size of a phone screen, nor to problems with light and reflections on a screen. Unfortunately a book’s contents, once printed, cannot be up-dated – but that’s where the internet comes in, to do that job. The two can complement each other effectively.
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The next Post in this Series describes a cold weather fossick on Gemstone Beach plus how another rockhound has tested a blue stone from there, to try to identify it. An Index to all the Posts in this Series is here.
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