Gemstone Beach, near Orepuki on the south coast, “is in a constant state of change with the surface changing from sand to stones with the storms and tides” (Southland website). This year, I spent three weeks in March in Southland, collecting beach stones, and I made five visits to Gemstone Beach. This year the beach offered lots and lots of good stones, maybe the most I have seen. As a result, I collected probably about 18 kilograms of stones from there to take home to polish. These included over 100 stones with fossil worm casts.
Gemstone Beach is just a kilometre from Orepuki, a small village on a sparsely settled part of the southern coast of New Zealand. Gold was mined in the district during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and in the 1880s the southernmost Chinese settlement in the world was to be found there. It is said that semi-precious gems such as garnet, sapphire, jasper, quartz and semi-nephrite can be found on Gemstone Beach, although some of these are very rare. Quartz and jasper are reasonably common, and you can sometimes find hydrogrossular garnet stones and argillite stones containing fossil worm casts.
TAUNOA STREAM
When you initially walk down from the car park and emerge onto Gemstone Beach (see map below), it can be a real disappointment if you’re expecting to see a lot of great stones. The immediate area is usually primarily sand, with only a handful of widely-spaced stones around. [NOTE: In the three years since I wrote this, there have been many times when there has been lots of stones on this part of the beach. They come and go from time to time.] Just to the left is a small (un-named) stream which many people go to in order to see if there are interesting stones there but it also sometimes disappoints.
This photo (below), taken by me in February 2018, shows a family on the beach just a few metres away from the car park. Notice the wide scattering of stones – usually there are less than 10 per cent of this number in this area. The two people in the background are looking towards the un-named stream.
When you come onto the beach from the car park, about 200 metres to your right (in a north-west direction) is a stream that flows across the beach to the sea, Taunoa Stream (see map above). At times the depth of the stream water can be high enough to dissuade anyone wearing shoes from crossing, unless they take their shoes off. However, it is further along the beach beyond this stream that the stones will be found. At high tide, it can be impossible to ford the Taunoa Stream because of the waves rushing in to the foot of the nearby cliff. This year, the stream bed was full of stones, the water having swept the covering of sand from them. A significant part of my second visit to Gemstone Beach this month (March) was spent examining the stones in the stream.
NORTH-WEST OF TAUNOA STREAM
At times, one has to walk a long way (maybe 200 or 300 metres) past the Taunoa Stream to find stones (see photo below, left). This year, after only about 100 metres past the stream, large drifts of stones covered the beach (below, right).
And the stones were scattered right up to the cliff face, unlike at other times when I have visited.
Each drift of stones on the beach consisted of a good layer of pebbles, some on the small side but many of a good polish-able size.
THE WAIMEAMEA RIVER MOUTH
About one kilometre along the beach from the Taunoa Stream is the mouth of the small Waimeamea River.
Currently – and this was also the case when I was there in September 2018 – there is a large bank of stones along the beach, starting about 400 metres before the Waimeamea River mouth and continuing as far along the beach as I could see (some kilometres). The bank is quite high, maybe four or five metres in places, and up to 50 metres wide. Some of the stones here are bigger than those closer to Taunoa Stream, too big for my tumble polish barrels. But the bulk of them are much smaller, just right for the tumbler.
The stone bank holds back the waters of the river, preventing them from reaching the sea, creating a lagoon running parallel to the coast. However, water seeps under the stones to meet the incoming waves, the stones start to collapse, and eventually a channel appears for the river to flow out, as I had observed in September 2018.
THREE ENCOUNTERS
Birds are perhaps the most common wildlife encountered on southern beaches. At the mouth of the Waimeamea River, I walked past some seagulls and terns, trying hard not to disturb them:
Further back down the beach, near the Taunoa Stream, in my second encounter, I met up with Maike and Martin, a young couple from Germany on holiday in the South Island. They were picking up interesting stones and asked me how they could get them polished. I volunteered to do a batch for them. I also gave them a short break from living out of their car, inviting them back to the crib at Riverton. Below are some of the stones I am in the process of polishing for them.
See this Post to see how these stones looked after polishing.
My third encounter, from a distance, was with some horse riders, glimpsed as I left Gemstone Beach for the last time during this series of visits. They were moving towards the car park from the south-east of the beach, from the direction of Monkey Island. There were four riders on horses, one horse carrying a child being led, and a wagon drawn by two horses.
See the later Post Some “Gems” from Gemstone Beach to see how a batch of 95 stones I collected turned out after polishing.
