About Us
Article from North and South Magazine
With the vastness of the Tasman Sea just 16 paces from his Hokitika house it's no wonder Raymond Oliver's always gazing out to sea. But it's not Tsunamis, starnded solo rowers or his dolphin swimming buddies he watches for beyond the sandbanks and marram grass, it's the millions of small flat stones the waves leave. They're the raw material for Stoneweavers, the small but growing stone-mat business he and wife Colleen started three years ago.
The beach beyond the Oliver's back door is stone heaven. Dozens of West Coast rivers - from Jackson Bay in the south to Westport in the north - transport fractured sedimentary rocks from the Southern ALps into the tumbling Tasman Sea, which spills them back on to the beaches again nicely smoothed and polished.
Dark greywacke, olivey serpentine, little bits of green nephrite, moon-white quartz, even precious pounamu - at certain times Hokitika's beach is dotted with gleaming heaps of stones.
When the bounty appears on the five-kilometre stretch for which he has a harvesting permit Oliver's out there, shovelling stone treasure before the pounding sea claims it back again.
"I've learned to read the beach," says Oliver. "It's totally dynamic. Sometimes you won't see a flat stone from one end to the other. Sometimes there's heaps. Today I got three quarters of a tonne, really good ones. I knew they were coming. A dropping tide from a high tide is the best time."
It's dicey work. Oliver takes a small front-end loader over gravel and across creeks to where the greedy tide is surging in. "The hardest spot is right where the waves are and if I get bogged it's not fun. I've got a big old tractor I can use to pull my machine out if I do. When we first started we used to sit on the beach with buckets and pick them up one by one," laughs Oliver.
The gathered stones are screened, cleaned and sorted into 22 sizes using a purpose-built grading machine - Oliver's own invention - outside his house. Then they're trucked to a factory - a large ward in now - disused Seaview Hospital - where they are fixed to tough marine carpet mats using powerful adhesive. Little round stones for coasters, bigger ones for tablemats, floormats and so on. The Olivers and their staff of eight also make long matting for garden paths and special orders for patios and porches. "They're tactile," says Oliver, running his hand over the mat's cool smoothness.
The business gets a green tick. An environmental impact report undertaken by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research for the resource consent application concluded that at the current rate of harvest it will take 380 years to clear the beach of stones - but only if no more are deposited. Luckily, nearby Hokitika River brings down 6.2 million cubic meters of sedimentary material every year.
"It's the weirdest thing to be making a living out of sticking stones on stuff," says Oliver, who believes it's the kind of enterprise the West Coast needs. "A renewable resource you can turn into something practical and beautiful." Meantime he's dreaming of building a big shed and finding time to develop the next half-dozen ideas. "I can't help it. Sometimes Colleen says, 'Ray, turn your brain off man!'"