where to find basalt rock westland survival

Dunite was first discovered and named in the Nelson region-it takes its name from Dun Mountain in the Richmond Range. But where it has been sliced open at one end, the orange crust gives way to an astonishing emerald colour, which Hoolihan has polished to a glassy finish. The meat rock could equally be called the potato rock-it’s a long ovular stone the size of a large kūmara. My son and I lovingly refer to it as the meat rock because, well… it kind of looks like a piece of meat.”

So many people walk over it because it’s quite boring, but when you cut it open, it’s these beautiful shades of green. It’s normally found deep within the Earth’s crust. “There aren’t many places in the world where you find it on the surface. “This is dunite,” she says, running her fingers across the surface of the stone. She knew exactly what she was looking at. Hoolihan reached out with her G-pick, a kind of pointed hammer, and prised it free.

It sat submerged beneath the water, perhaps carried down from the mountains in the last rainfall.

The rock was weathered and pinkish-totally unremarkable to the untrained eye. When Jen Hoolihan found the meat rock, she had been fossicking for hours up the Wairoa River outside Richmond. Written by Don Rowe Photographed by Andrew MacDonald

Where to find basalt rock westland survival