Black Sand Beach

We stopped at a black sand beach just north of Mokau for a quick walk around and some photo taking time of yet another ocean wave. As you know I just cannot get enough beach-ocean-wave-time in my life to be completely filled up.

While taking photos in my normal crouched down position to see just how close I can get to my subject, it was pointed out to me that there is a wave coming my way, and I might want to stand up. Then in the next moment, it was suggested that I might want to do this quickly as the next wave is larger and moving rapidly towards us. My normal jogging backwards maneuver was not going to help me in this case and in order for me to avoid getting soaked by this wave, I had to turn around and run back up the beach with a bit of gusto.

It is a funny sight to see a couple of tourist running from the waves in a haphazard manner and sometimes you cannot help yourself but to laugh aloud. So that is just what the fishermen did, which we knew was done purely from the heart. Therefore, we went over and struck up a conversation with Elbe the fisherman.

 

It wasn’t too long in the conversation when Nimble, his friend, joined us and the conversation that ensued was one of the best visits with a random local person of the entire trip. Without this meeting, we would not have truly known why the sand at this beach was so different. The sand is magnetic iron-sand which is rich in titanomagnetite that is a magnetic variety of iron oxide that also contains some titanium.

“In the 1920s the Onekaka Iron and Steel Company built a blast furnace and ironworks near deposits of limonite iron ore at Onekakā in north-west Nelson. They were successful in smelting iron, but the iron ore reserves were small, and the operation ceased in 1935”. Te Are – The encyclopedia of New Zealand.

At the end of the fishing line is a torpedo RC controlled gadget that is used to set the fishing line out past the breaker waves.

Thank you Elbe and Nimble for making our visit to the black sand beach memorable.

We hope you had a great day fishing. P.S. your advice to eat at the Fat Pigeon was most excellent, they really do serve beautiful food.