September 2026 Book Launch Trip – Part 14, Seven Finds From a High Tide Fossick at Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, Wednesday Afternoon 23 September

This afternoon I returned to Seadown Beach when the tide was higher so that I could look at any wet stones high up on the beach. I was there for an hour and a quarter, the temperature being around 11 to 12 degrees, with a light but cool wind and an increasing cloud cover. During that time, I walked north and encountered a number of good patches of stones though the tide was retreating and left many of the stones dry. Despite that, I made a few very interesting finds, seven of which are featured below.

The waves were too high to fossick among the rocks at the south end.

As I walked northm patches of stones began to appear.

A bit further north, more stones.

Looking back south.

The most interesting find was this small agate/chalcedony. I have found a small number of chalcedony stones on this beach before (e.g., May 2021, March 2022, June 2022, March 2024, March 2025, March 2026, and earlier this month). They all have had varying characters, but none have been like this one. I could see it had some intriguing tiny features but I needed the close-up photos to reveal what was going on. It seems to mainly consist of faint sphericules. One side looked like it had a small fragment in a hole but it turned out that the “fragment” is part of the stone. A small white patch consists of tiny concentric bands:

Side A of stone.

With a torch behind it:

The other side is a little plainer:

Side B of stone.

I found a couple of dark brown stones that contain lots of tiny bryozoan fossils (and there’s probably other little things in there too). This is the first one:    

Bryozoan fossil stone.

Other side of this stone:

This one is a large size (from a tumble polisher’s point of view) and packed full of fossils:

Larger bryozoan fossil stone.

Two quartzites, a light grey (neutral-hued) one and a yellow/orange one with a dash of red:

A nice smooth well-formed iron-oxide stained quartz:     

Finally, a smaller sized veined quartz:      

The next Post in this Series features one last fossick on Seadown Beach before I keep driving north (Post not yet available). An Index to all the Posts in this Series is here.  

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. View all posts by tumblestoneblog