Birdlings Flat is about 15 minutes away from our campsite at Tai Tapu and we were told by Bruce’s workmate, Dave, that this was the place to go to pick up gemstones off the beach. He told us it was much better than the West Coast.
At first glance we thought we must have come to the wrong place. The beach is made up of dunes of stones – absolute acres of them. We wondered how on earth we would be able to find gemstones in there, not to mention them being very hard to walk through. However we ploughed our way, on foot, to the edge of the sea and there we discovered some treasures. The waves had wet the stones and that was when you could really see the different colours and textures. I had brough a supermarket bag with me to put some stones in and halfway through our walk I gave the bag to Bruce as a way of stopping me from putting any more in it. That strategy didn’t work as we continued to find “treasures” that we could not resist. The stones are all smooth and evenly shaped because of the action of the water so they felt wonderful to touch and hold as well.
Hunter and Oscar had a great time. Hunter wore himself out chasing seagulls and Oscar chased stones that we “wheeled” along the sand.
Just down the road was a sign to a Gemstone Museum so we decided to have a look. What a treaure trove that was! It was attached to the home of some devoted lapidaries, and they appear to have won all sorts of awards for the stones they have found, cut and polished. From them we learnt that some of the stones we collected were jasper and agate that had come from the volcanic mountains of the southern alps, that had washed down the rivers to the sea and deposited along the beaches where we were. Their museum demonstrated how ordinary the stones were until they were cut and polished, but they also had petrified wood, rocks with fossilised shells in them and samples of every colour you could imagine. We gave them a donation for their time and carried on.
Our next stop was to my Uncle Ron’s in Christchurch where my Aunty Phyl and Uncle Ross also happened to be staying. We had a bit of a catch up with them and a cuppa and then headed out to the NZMCA site “Weedons” just south of town.
Away From Home NZ 