Rocks n Birds n Plants

I’ve been tumbling rocks constantly for the last few months since I bought the tumbling kit. After years of collecting rocks while travelling around the country, it’s great to finally be able to see some of them at their best, polished and shining. These ones above were from Tassie along the north coast where there are a couple of fossicking areas, I believe most of them are jasper, though there’s some agate in there and petrified wood as well.

Shiny Beans

And my quartz  jelly beans from the Tingha and Stannifer areas in NSW have come out sparkling like jewels. They looked interesting to begin with in their natural rough form like this.

But polished up they truly sparkle. The experience of polishing the outside skin so you can see within the quartz is super rewarding, different to other rocks like the jasper at the top of the page where you see a shiny outside, the quarts opens up a whole world within the quarts because you can see into it and often see right through it.

Shiny

You see little air bubbles sometimes, scattered, sometimes in layers or planes through the rock, you see veils, phantom crystals telling a story of the crystals growth over time, small pieces of other rock that the crystal has grown around and enveloped. There are “Chevrons” forming strong “V” patterns like growth rings of a tree, and some you would swear had misty smoke trapped within them like a three dimensional photograph, some of them white smoke, others whisps of golden yellow or orange, right through to deep browns.

More shiny

I’ll take some close up of these at a later date, I might do a complete post on “what’s inside the beans” but the weather is rubbish and I already have a load of other photos I should put up. So we’ll draw a line under this for now.

Yeah, not really funny, and not really a line, I know.

 

Look at you, you handsome devil.

 

Out with the old, in with the new.

 

Silver eyes

I do love these little birds visiting the birdbath, they come down in such huge numbers. I wouldn’t love them so much if I had fruit trees near me, they decimate the orchard up the hill when fruits are in season.

 

Insects nightmare

It’s that time of year again when the Drosera’s are out, time for insects to beware, it’s not just all the birds after them but also the plants.

Soft nightmare

 

You’re not an insect. Neither are you.

 

Pea flower

 

Rosemary

 

Tiny carnivorous plants

A fairly short post this one as I’m out fossicking and want to start writing up a new post about fossicking spots in W.A. while it’s all fresh.

 

Previous Post Next Post

You Might Also Like

4 Comments

  • Reply Micaela Ehrensperger September 8, 2020 at 3:39 pm

    Love your stories! And am looking forward to your fossicking post. The tumbled stones look great, just bought myself a second hand tumbler and will give the quartz from my fossicking trips a go. Please post some more tumbled rock photos on your site!
    Cheers, Micaela

    • Reply joel September 22, 2020 at 1:38 pm

      Hey Michaela, hope the tumbling is going well for you.. I’ve put up the new WA fossicking post if you care to have a look.
      Joel

  • Reply Annie April 5, 2021 at 12:18 pm

    Hey Joel, newbie Rock enthusiast from Tasmania here. I’m about to go travelling around Australia in a van with my husband and I just wanted to say that your blog has been so helpful with researching areas for our trip. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. Annie

    • Reply joel April 5, 2021 at 12:58 pm

      Thanks Annie. Nice, good luck traveling in Egg.. I see you guys like hiking, you should try and get into the Bibbulmun if you make it over here, I’m leaving next week to hopefully do a double going up and back. Also I’ve just added a “categories” menu to the top bar of my site, makes it easy to find all fossicking pages in the one spot.

    Leave a Reply