A Blog About Stone Gathering, Tumbling and Polishing, and Rocks and Landscapes, from New Zealand – With Musical Interludes (john.tumblestone@gmail.com)
This is my second recent photo-book, using an online site. The first was on the trace fossil stones of Gemstone Beach. “The 33 Stones of the Lockdown” features the stones I posted on TumbleStone Blog over the 33 days of the Lockdown in New Zealand. The first Post of this Series, on Thursday 26 March, featured a small grey brecciated stone from Gemstone Beach.
I decided that a photo-book would be a great way to be able to look back, in the years ahead, on a significant and unusual time in the history of our communities, country and the globe. I no longer have all these 33 stones as I sent a few to those of my small number of Facebook friends who followed the Series on Facebook, so the photo-book is also a record of some special and unusual pebbles that I have collected and tumble-polished. Photos dominate the 30 page book, which is hardcover and 20 cm by 20 cm in size. At the beginning is a photo of all 33 stones followed by a brief introduction to the Covid-19 pandemic in New Zealand.
Photos of the 33 stones make up the bulk of the book. On some pages, just one stone is featured. On other pages, two stones are displayed. The online site provides a number of pre-determined formats and these two best fitted my aims.
It is difficult to control the brightness and colour of the finished product. What you see on your computer screen is not always an accurate representation of what turns up in the book. I order one copy of the book first and then make any adjustments required to ensure good images before ordering any further copies.
The final couple of pages have photos of the places where the stones were found.
Stone Two was found on the Back Beach at Riverton last year, at the end of the road, on the shores of Foveaux Strait, with Rakiura/Stewart Island in the background. I think it is a quartzite stone, with lace-like tendrils spread throughout. As I have stated in a previous Post, Quartzites are not as common along the south coast as at Birdlings Flat in Canterbury, but I always find a couple of excellent ones at Riverton and Orepuki. They polish well, often have great colour, have interesting veins through them, and there’s a depth to them that makes them intriguing.
A quartzite starts off as a quartz-rich sandstone, a sedimentary rock that is grainy and feels like sandpaper. When the sandstone is exposed to high temperatures and pressures, the hard glassy metamorphic rock of quartzite is formed. Quartzite’s wide variety of colours are a result of minor amounts of impurities being incorporated with the quartz during the process of metamorphism. It is often the cloudy or lace-like trails of impurities that provide the most fascinating aspect of a quartzite stone.
Stone Two: Polished quartzite stone from the Back Beach, RivertonStone Two: Other side of polished quartzite stone from the Back Beach, Riverton
Today New Zealand entered Covid-19 Alert Level Four, the highest Alert Level for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. This means that everyone is to stay at home, apart from those in essential services, initially for a period of four weeks. People are allowed to travel to supermarkets and pharmacies to obtain the necessities of life but are otherwise to remain at home, interacting only with those in the same household. The aim of this unprecedented measure is to break the chain of virus transmission within the community and avoid a catastrophic overwhelming of the health system. As at Wednesday 25 March, New Zealand officially had 205 confirmed cases of people with Covid-19, only six of them requiring hospitalisation but none in Intensive Care. Now is a good time to take extreme measures to minimise the impact of future cases.
To mark the passing days of Alert Level Four, I will choose a polished stone each day. Fortunately I am also able to continue to tumble stones throughout this time of restriction – I have some good stores of stones yet to be tumbled. Each day, I will post photos of a recently polished stone.
Stone One, collected on Gemstone Beach in 2019, is a breccia with small mainly white and light grey fragments in a grey matrix. A breccia is a sedimentary stone made up of randomly oriented angular fragments cemented together in a fine-grained matrix, the fragments not previously eroded by water or wind. Like this stone, it can be similar to a piece of concrete.
Stone One: Polished breccia stone from Gemstone BeachStone One: Other side of polished breccia stone from Gemstone Beach
While I was in Riverton, Southland, on a stone collecting trip, a mass shooting occurred in Christchurch of people attending Friday prayers at two mosques, 50 dead and 50 injured. Nothing like this has ever happened before in New Zealand. The whole country was deeply shocked. The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has been extraordinary in leading the grieving and starting to work though a response.
Based on a drawing by Ruby Jones
Drawing by Shaun YeoNew Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Photo by Kirk Hargreaves
Flowers laid next to Riverton MuseumFlags at half-mast in Riverton
From the National Remembrance Service on 28 March:
Jacinda Ardern’s full speech from the National Remembrance Service:
The significant coastal uplift that resulted has been confirmed. Nasa have produced “before” and “after” satellite photos:
and GNS Science’s Kelvin Berryman has illustrated aspects of the fault line changes on the ground:
Dr Kate Pedley, a University of Canterbury geologist, has walked along part of the fault-line and taken photos of the small and large impacts as can been seen on the landscape:
Drone footage of part of the rupture:
In one place, part of the landscape has opened up and dropped, creating a large gully:
It was initially thought that the freshwater pool that acted as a seal pup nursery could have been buried or destroyed. This investigation found it still largely intact:
In February this year, our car trip around the South Island included a drive north along State Highway One from Christchurch to Kaikoura and then on to Picton to catch the car ferry across Cook Strait to Wellington. It was after our visit to the limestone landscapes around Duntroon that we made our way to Kaikoura, a small coastal tourist town. There we took a whale-watching boat trip during which we saw a sperm whale (a great sight!) and hundreds of dolphins diving and leaping about (an unforgettable sight!). The photos below were taken by Petra:
Sperm whale on the surface
Sperm whale starting to dive
Dolphins off the coast at Kaikoura
After the whale and dolphin sightseeing, we walked along the Kaikoura foreshore near our motel and collected a number of stones for future polishing. The next day, we continued our drive north, stopping after about 25 kms at Ohau Point to view seals on the rocks below the road and to walk inland up a stream to a small freshwater pool below a waterfall which is known as a seal pup nursery.
Ohau Point seal colony (Petra’s pic)
Ohau Point (Petra)
Ohau Point (Petra)
Basking seals at Ohau Point (John’s pic)
Ohau Stream pool and waterfall, a seal pup playground, though deserted at this time (John’s pic)
The seal pup pool was empty when we visited (click on the link below and then click to start the video to see a short video clip of seal pups in the pool).
Nine months later, on Monday 14 November, just after midnight, I felt the bed shaking lightly but persistently for what seemed to be quite a long time. I realised that an earthquake was occurring somewhere in New Zealand, some distance away, and that it was likely to be a big one. It turned out to be a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Its epicentre was about 15 kilometres north-east of Culverden in Canterbury, and 60 kilometres south-west of Kaikoura, at a depth of 15 kilometres. The earthquake ruptured on multiple fault lines in a complex sequence that lasted for more than one minute. It was New Zealand’s second largest earthquake in recorded history, though only two fatalities have been associated with it. Its impact on Kaikoura has been devastating. Multiple very large landslides occurred along the coast, burying parts of State Highway One and the railroad track, and portions of seabed near Kaikoura were lifted at least two metres along the shore. Click the link below and then click to start the video for brief video footage of uplifted beach.
Massive landslides caused by the earthquake and its multiple aftershocks appear to have wiped out the seal breeding ground at Ohau Point, just weeks before the start of pupping season.
It was fortunate timing, however, as many would have been out at sea feeding at the time.It was unlikely there were pups at the waterfall at the time of the earthquake, according to a Department of Conservation spokesperson. The waterfall was not yet accessible, so it was unclear if it remained intact, but due to the surrounding damage it was unlikely to have survived. “Those seals generally come back to the area where they were born. They’ll go in there and it won’t be like anywhere they recognise before, so they’ll probably just go and breed on other parts of the coast.” A group of University of Canterbury students had been studying the seal colony and hoped to use thermal imaging to check the population. “We’re hoping to get up there within the next couple weeks,” said Dr Sharyn Goldstein, who is supervising the students. “Apparently there has been a big landslide, and at this year they’re pupping and pregnant so it might have quite an effect.” (Source = Another Stuff Report.)
The Kaikoura earthquake lifted long strips of coast out of the sea on Monday morning, in parts as high as two metres. The following are before/after photos of an area about 50 kms north of Kaikoura town (source):
Waipapa Bay, about 50 kms north of Kaikoura, before the earthquake, March 2016After the earthquake
The uplift of the by the earthquake has stranded many crayfish and paua (a shell fish).
Many paua are attached to this large rock which is now permanently above high tide.
See this Stuff Report for more, and see The Spinoff for a discussion of the coastal uplift along the Kaikoura shore.
As a beach-stone collector and polisher, it is sobering to see the forces and processes at work that produce the rocks and the coasts that we spend time at when pursuing this hobby.
