The Introduction to the 2027 TumbleStone Calendar can be found here. The Calendar features groups of beach stones I collected during the past year. 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 beach featured in the month of May is located on Te Waewae Bay, Southland, some 15 kilometres west of Gemstone Beach but on the other side of the Waiau River. When I stay with fellow rockhound Chrissy, this beach is within easy walking distance. The last part of the walk is down a steep track which at times can be quite muddy. There are more detailed comments about access in this Post. There is a lot of overlap in the stones with Gemstone Beach but the diversity is a little less, the good ones are harder to find, and the stones tend to be a little rougher. However, I have found some very nice stones here, especially poppy jaspers, thulite and hydrogrossular garnets.
Other Blog Posts which feature Papatotara Beach include: Ninety Minutes With the Sandflies on Papatotara Beach (September 2026), Papatotara Beach (March 2026), Second Papatotara Beach Fossick (July 2026), An Outstanding Poppy Jasper Find (July 2026), Chrissy’s Large Thulite from Papatotara Beach (August 2025), and Fossicking with Chrissy at The Cliffs, Papatotara (March 2023).
Stone One (top row, left, in the Calendar) is one of the most interesting poppy jaspers I have found on the south coast. It’s also larger than most I discover. The white material in it has worn away a little faster than the dark red, leaving the orbs slightly higher. I found it in July 2026.
Jasper is a type of chalcedony or microcrystalline quartz. It is opaque due to the presence of minerals which give it colour, with the red of iron oxide being most common. Poppy jaspers may be orbicular or spherulitic, orbs forming due to the presence of minerals which crystallise in concentric layers around a nucleus or central point, sphericules forming as radiating fibres from a central point. If the resulting spots are red or orange, they look like a field of poppies from above. For more, see “A Selective Annotated Index to Poppy Jaspers in TumbleStone Blog”.
Stone Two (top row, far right, in the Calendar) is more the kind of poppy jasper I find along the Te Waewae Bay coast. It has been smoothed out by the sea much more than Stone One and it’s much smaller, just a little bigger than my thumb nail. I found it in September 2026.
Stone Three (bottom row, centre, in the Calendar) caught my eye because of the white patches in a dark background, and the thin light-coloured lines in it. I found it the same day I found Stone Two. It has the very-fine-grained character of a mudstone like argillite but I am unsure what it actually is.
Stone Four (bottom row, far right in Calendar) was found in March 2026. It’s kind of pink but probably not rhodonite or thulite, beacuse of its quartzy-looking nature. At the time, I speculated it might be quartzite.
The Post on June is not yet available.
