This afternoon I spent two-and-a-quarter hours on Gemstone Beach with fellow rockhound Chrissy and her dog Ohla. We arrived just over an hour before low tide, easily avoiding the recent high levels of waves coming up the beach. At the start, the weather was the best of any day during my current trip, it being sunny with temperatures being around 17 degrees though with some wind. There were three cars in the car park when we arrived and a handful of people on the beach, one person being as far down as the Waimeamea River. We ourselves also made it to the Waimeamea though rain started coming down shortly after that. Halfway back to the car park, the wind came up, almost to gale strength, and the accompanying rain might have included some hail. The temperature dropped quickly to eight degrees. We were buffetted, cold and very wet during the last 400 metres or so.
But the stones were worth it. I saw a lot of trace fossil stones, quite a few interesting patterned stones, and the odd hydrogrossular garnet and poppy jasper. Below features 19 of my finds.
This find had the most interesting looking texture:
A stone with circular features in it – I have found two or three of these before on Gemstone Beach but am unsure of its identification:
A colourful breccia ( a stone consisting of angular, not rounded, fragments):
A different kind of breccia:
Sometimes I think this next kind of stone is also a breccia, consisting mainly of quartz plus epidote with maybe a little feldspar – but it could instead be a cluster of crystals:
An igneous stone with white crystals plus some intriguing orange circular features:
Two different igneous stones with white crystals, probably diorite with feldspar crystals – the second one seems to include two different variations distinguished by the size and number of the white crystals:
A nice brown hydrogrossular garnet:
This is my favourite kind of poppy jasper:
This second and much smaller small poppy jasper has small widely-spaced orbs/spheres and its silvery-grey hematite shows through well between them:
The following were among the diverse trace fossils in argillite stones I picked up. This first one has a large raised trace on one side while its other side is very different, seeming to contain many small faint traces:
Well defined slightly-raised traces:
A long solitary trace:
A faint but nevertheless recognisable trace:
My favourite of today’s trace fossil stones, containing a couple of obvious large traces, some small traces, and three or four large faint traces – there’s a lot going on here:
This the smallest of my trace fossil finds is also a favourite because its clearly defined traces cover around half of its surface:
When I saw this next stone, a red one, I wondered initially if it might be a breccia of some kind but close inspection of especially the longest of the lighter-coloured fragments (down its centre section) strongly suggests there are trace fossils too:
Finally, I wonder whether the little central feature in this stone could be a trace fossil – it’s very unusual and shaped like some trace fossils I have seen:
So it’s farewell to Gemstone Beach once again, my next fossick taking place on my drive north, at Kakanui’s Seadown Beach. An Index to all the Posts in this Series is here.
