September 2026 Book Launch Trip – Part 5, Rainbow Over Foveaux Strait, Riverton Aparima, Thursday 10 September

The book launch is in Invercargill tonight. This morning I worked on some photos of stones and a blog post on my recent Kakanui fossick. In the early afternoon, I decided that I needed some fresh air so, despite the cold weather, I headed to the Back Beach. I arrived at the eastern end at 1.20pm, and fossicked around the corner from the main beach.

However, I needed to leave after only 20 minutes – there was a strong southerly wind blowing directly over Foveaux Strait. It was eight degrees, probably five with the wind chill. As I drove along the road to the turning point, a rainbow appeared over the Strait.

On the way back to the crib, I stopped off for ten minutes at Henderson’s Bay, a noticeably more sheltered beach, though stones there are not plentiful. I collected only 15 stones altogether this afternoon. Six of them are featured below. 

 I found this small breccia stone today – it has a diversity of colourful fragments within it:     

A quartz stone with a brecciated creamy-yellow mineral in it:

A rhyolite stone:

A very dark red jasper – I have lightened up the close-ups to show its texture more clearly:

A trace fossil in an argillite stone, with the trace slightly raised:

I picked this stone up because I could see some  small patches or crystals in it:    

The next Post features my speech tonight at the launch of “What’s This Stone?” in Invercargill.    

An Index to all the Posts in this Series is here.  

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Author: tumblestoneblog

Retired Academic, male, living in the New Zealand countryside near Whanganui with his wife as well as Jasper the dog, Fluffy the cat, Dancer and Penny, the horses, and a shed half-full of stones. Email john.tumblestone@gmail.com.

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