Rock collecting sites – Page 4

“Gemstones” by Jocelyn Thornton (1985)

“Although New Zealand lacks the commonly accepted ‘precious gems’ (diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald), many local stones deserve our recognition” (from the Introduction to “Gemstones”).

This booklet, originally published in 1985 in the Mobil New Zealand Nature Series, is long out-of-print but now available online as a pdf file. The pdf file is 36 pages long (each of its pages consist of two of the original booklet pages when its comes to numbering – the original booklet numbered each side of each sheet, making 74 pages). It is a great source of information on the range of precious and semi-precious gemstones to be found in New Zealand – from greenstone to agate to jasper to petrified wood, and many more. It contains some great photos of the many different types of stones, supplemented with notes on where these specimens have been found (see below for the entry on “Carnelian”). Reference is often made to places such as Birdlings Flat, Rangitata River, Orepuki, Kakanui, Mt Somers, the Coromandel Peninsula, and Takaka.

Joyce Thornton also wrote the entry on “Gemstones” for Te Ara, the Online NZ Encyclopedia. This entry has some excellent photos of different types of stones, such as “Silicified Wood and Plant Material“. “Chert, Flint and Jasper“, and “Greywacke Pebbles with Quartz Veins“. In 2004, she received the NZ Order of Merit for services to Earth Sciences.

Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/5124/silicified-wood-and-plant-material

Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/5123/chert-flint-and-jasper

Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/5121/greywacke-pebbles-with-quartz-veins

“The New Zealand Rockhound” by Natalie Fernandez (1981)

This is the second significant New Zealand book published on rock tumbling (after the Coopers’ book), though its scope is broader, “rockhounding” in New Zealand in general. I ordered this book through Amazon and they sourced it from Bookhaven, a second hand bookstore in Wellington.

fernandez cover13042016

“The New Zealand Rockhound” by Natalie Fernandez was published in 1981 by Boughtwood Printing and Publishing House, Auckland. The book measures 14 cm by 21.5 cm and has 191 pages. Beach stones, my prime interest, are only one form of rocks – they are very useful for stone polishers because they are already relatively smooth and rounded, already the subject of hundreds of years of “tumble polishing” in rivers and ocean. Rockhounds need to be able to identify rough and dirty rocks in the field – all I have to do is wet a beach stone and decide if I like the result.

“The New Zealand Rockhound” covers rockhounding in New Zealand in general. Chapter Six, “The art of the lapidary”, starts off with five pages on rock tumbling before going on to discuss cutting and grinding and other means of working with rocks and stones. Chapter Four on “Rocks and minerals” provides an introduction to the topic in the context of New Zealand’s geology, and Chapter Five, “Locations”, provides an annotated list of NZ places to find interesting rocks.

Fernandez’s book also has a delightful frontispiece of stamps with rocks and fossils on them:

fernandez stamps13042016

“New Zealand Gemstones” by Lyn and Ray Cooper (1966)

On the way home from our South Island holiday, once the seed had been planted that we would start polishing stones, in Wellington I visited three second hand bookstores in search of books on rocks and rock tumbling. I found this book at that time, probably the first New Zealand book on rock tumbling.

“New Zealand Gemstones” by Lyn and Ray Cooper was published in 1966 by A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington. It is a hardback book, 22 cms by 14 cms, 125 pages long and cost me $20 at ArtyBees secondhand bookstore.

The key chapter for me at this early stage was Chapter Three, “How to tumble-polish”. It is now a bit out-dated in parts, as new technology has since changed some aspects of rock tumbling, but it provided me with the basic ideas about what tumble polishing involves and what its key principles are.

Chapter Two was the next most interesting, “Where to find the stones”, the location of interesting stones in New Zealand based on the authors’ own expeditions to different places. Again, some of this information is now out-dated and is at least partly constrained by the authors’ experiences (there are some parts of the country they have not been to), but provides an invaluable starting point. (Their comments led me to take a trip to the Coromandel Peninisula beaches not long afterwards.) Chapter Six, “What to do with stones”, was on a topic that I realised I would need to pay some attention to sooner or later.