The Introduction to this Calendar can be found here. The 2027 TumbleStone Calendar features groups of beach stones I collected during the past year, each month having stones from a particular beach. The stones are rough (un-polished) and wet, photographed in my hand in sunlight, showing their colours and details. These 2027 Calendars are for sale, $37.50 for posting to a non-rural address in New Zealand, $42.50 to a rural address. Orders can be emailed to me at john.tumblestone@gmail.com. If you are also interested in my books, “What’s This Stone? A Photographic Collection of Finds from Gemstone Beach” and/or “The Trace Fossil Stones of Gemstone Beach”, postage costs can be saved by ordering more than one at the same time.
The month of February features five stones I found on Timaru South Beach in 2026. This is a stretch of beach that starts near Redruth Park, just under one kilometre south of Timaru’s Patiti Point. It runs a further four and a half kilometres or so, south past Mutu Mutu Point and the Jack’s Point lighthouse to the Ellis Road Beach carpark. Much of the southernmost half is backed by cliffs, as you can see in the beach photo in the Calendar. Along the top of these cliffs is a walkway. For a part of the beach, you often need to be alert when fossicking near the waves’ edge. Waves break closer to shore than at other beaches I tend to visit and they can move quickly up the steepish, if short, gravel slope. The beach photo for the month was taken on 12 March from the roadside parking area at the end of Scarborough Road, looking south over the railway line towards Mutu Mutu Point. This visit was one of only two to this beach in 2026, the other one being on 22 July. Stones One and Two in the Calendar were found on 22 July, Stones Three and Four on 12 March.
I think that Stone One (top row, far left, in the Calendar) is probably a brecciated quartzite, brecciated meaning that it has been fragmented and reformed to some extent:
Stone Two (bottom row, far left, in the Calendar) is a brecciated jasper, with quartz inbetween the fragments:
I have found a few interesting green stones on this beach. Stone Three (bottom row, centre, in the Calendar) is maybe what could be called a quartzite or even an epidosite, made up of green epidote and quartz:
Stone Four (bottom row, far right, in the Calendar) appears to consist of lots and lots of tiny bits of quartz, many stained orange by iron oxide:
The Post on March’s stones is not yet available.
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