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 January features five stones I found on Ward Beach in Southern Marlborough in 2026. This area was uplifted about two and a half metres by the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, unveiling the Ward Beach boulders. The most common stone on the beach is limestone of various hues, with many containing trace fossils. I always visit the beach whenever I drive down from Whanganui to Southland (and back), an overnight stop at Ward being a good break after and before the Cook Strait ferry trip. The beach photo for the month is a stone-level one taken in front of the carpark in March 2026.
Stone One (top row, centre, in the Calendar) is a brown one with varying textures, found on 27 July. Close-ups reveal that it contains quartz:
Stone Two (top row, far right, in the Calendar) is limestone, found in September. It has a lovely light-cream and grey mottling, with some nice thin veins:
Stone Three (bottom row, far left, in the Calendar) is one of the many trace fossil limestone pebbles from the beach. This one, found on 10 March, is one of four featured in the Post for that day. It has strong markings, what looks like two traces crossing one another:
Stone Four (bottom row, centre, in Calendar) is probably a tiny jasper with some lively red veins and some traces of white quartz. It’s the size of a fingernail, also found on 10 March:
Stone Five (bottom row, far right, in Calendar) is the biggest photo for the month because of the interesting colours, patterns and stress lines. Again a limestone, though unusually blue, again found on 10 March:
There are some orange iron oxide areas in the stone as well as some holes probably left from small burrowing animals as the sediment accumulated on the sea floor. The tectonic stress lines, making tiny interruptions to the patterns, are sometimes called earthquake lines.
The Post on February’s stones is here.
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