I drove from Riverton to Orepuki this afternoon, arriving at Gemstone Beach at 3.30pm. I was on my way to visit Chrissy at Papatotara to see the newly arrived books “What’s This Stone?” and to discuss Thursday’s book launch. It was windy, about 14 degrees, with storm clouds in the near distance. It was a dull afternoon, not the best light conditions for looking for interesting beach stones. Two cars were leaving when I parked, and no-one else was around. There was a good patch of stones in front of the car park. They seem to have been freshly turned over, and a diversity of colour and pattern could be seen. I crossed the Taunoa Stream, noticing a recent slip in the cliff, and fossicked among a good scattering of stones along the beach to the northwest.
There had been some cliff crumbling there as well, and sand had been shifted, exposing some of the orange sandstone platform that seems to underlie the beach. Some soft iron-stained stones had come out of the cliff.
I turned around after about 400 metres from the stream. Then a fierce southerly storm hit me – high winds and blinding cold rain with some hail in it. I was caught in the open. Fortunatelt I had a good rain coat on, but my jeans were drenched below my knees and water trickled into my gumboots. I struggled across the Taunoa and sheltered for a few minutes next to the crib in the cliff before making a break for the carpark, about 200 metres away. The temperature had dropped to 7 degrees, probably around 4 or 5 degrees with the wind chill. Was it worth it? Of course! Here are 11 of my finds.
The most interesting is perhaps this small dark red jasper which on close inspection seems to be a variety of poppy jasper:
Another intriguing small stone, with fuzzy-edged crystals:
Two brown stones, maybe sugar quartz, variations of darker and lighter:
I found a few argillite stones with trace fossils in them. This first one is packed with strongly expressed relatively large traces, with a couple of smaller and brighter ones overlying. I took it along to Thursday’s meeting of the Southland Geological and Lapidary Club and entered it into the night’s competition for recent finds.
However, there were three or four other very interesting entries which attracted all the votes.
This second trace fossil stone has green traces:
The third is a more common combination of colours, and contains quite a few traces, many cnsisting of lines of chevrons:
I continue to be fascinated with the variations of dark igneous stones with white crystals of different shapes, sizes and proportions. Here are four I picked up today:
My next fossick takes me back to the Beach Beach at Riverton Aparima.
An Index to all the Posts in this Series is here.
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