White Rock Beach, South Wairarapa District, Wellington Region, New Zealandi

Regional Level Types
White Rock Beach	Beach
South Wairarapa District	District
Wellington Region	Region
New Zealand	Country

To reach head south of Martinborough along the White Rock Road. The trip will take a little over one hour, and half is a gravel road. The beach is a wild, windswept and isolated location.

Half-way along the 5 kilometre stretch of beach is the starkly white rock itself the location is named for, against a backdrop of black sandy beach.

Crystallised flint, jasper and cone in cone calcite is said to be found in the area, although there are few details. The local geology at least matches the calcite description with calcilutite common, being a very fine cement like limestone. The local club source states to head down the beach towards White Rock and the shipwreck. The only shipwreck found was in the opposite direction at Te Kaukau Point, which the following geology description also refers to.

Calcilutite is found in the upper 10-15 metres of the Paleocene aged Mungaroa Limestone. It dips south-west, with numerous south-west plunging folds, as the western limb of a north-east trending anticline.

The calcilutite is light grey to olive grey, fine to very fine, slightly sandy, biomicritic and coccolithic, containing burrow structures. These are filled with glauconitic sand, light to medium green coloured. The calcilutite is interbedded with less prominent but compositionally similar pale olive to yellowish grey marls.

Also interbedded in the unit is laminated sandstone, mudstone, and siliceous limestone, all intruded by sandstone dykes.

The medium to fine grained laminated sandstone is blue-grey to greenish black, calcareous, with burrow structures, the unit containing glauconite rounded to angular clasts consisting up to 30% volume of the rock.

Mudstone is common in the upper 5 metres as dark grey to light olive grey, moderately indurated, non-calcareous, fine to very fine sandy mudstone, with burrow structures. It is also siliceous, contains sulphur efflorescence, limonite stained, with quartz. Common pyrite nodules are found up to 30 cms in diameter.

Siliceous calcilutite is less than 2% of the sequence, as dark greenish grey to pale blue, biomicritic, and very sheared.

The intrusive sandstone dykes are similar to the sandstone described above, except lacking burrow structures and sole marks, often containing calcilutite fragments. The sandstone is olive grey to dusky green, indurated, calcareous, massive fine to coarse grained sandstone, in part pyritic, and glauconitic.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References