The drive yesterday through Canterbury to Ward in Southern Marlborough was a cold one – two to three degrees most of the time, very windy, and snow occasionally mixed in with the rain. This morning on Ward Beach, things had improved a lot – it was sunny with a light wind though the temperature was only seven degrees. I spent less than half an hour on the beach and collected no more than a dozen stones, most of them limestone pebbles.
My limestone finds came in a range of colours and sometimes with veins, sometimes brecciated (fragmented):
This one has trace fossils in it:
At first glance, this next one looks like jasper but the material is more likely limestone, the dark red (and black) from the presence of an iron oxide mineral:
Finally, something different, what is likely to be a small igneous stone of some sort, with different kinds of crystals in it:
After this fossick I drove to Picton to catch an early afternoon ferry to the North Island, reaching home that night.
An Index to all the Posts in this Series is here.
