Kauri Coast

The west coast of the North Island's far north is known for its Kauri trees, both living and long buried.  This photo shows the stump of a long-felled monster Kauri.  The stump starts at the step in the foreground, and continues past where I stand in the background.
 

Besides their timber, kauri trees were sought after for their gum.  Before modern chemistry, polymers and resins used for varnish, floor coverings, etc., came from natural sources.  Kauri gum comes from cured sap.  Part of the secret to kauri trees' long life is the resin-rich sap.  This sap congeals into hard gum around any wound, damage, or infection.  In the previous century, climbers would use picks and steel crampons to climb these great giants.  Cutting gashes into their bark made them bleed sap which could be harvested later. 



Deep in the mountains along our route were several groves of ancient kauri behemoths. The largest and oldest of which is Tane Mahuta.  Standing over 150ft tall, it is over 55ft to its first branch.   The trunk has a girth of over 45ft, and a volume of over 8,800 cubic feet.  At over 2,000 years old, it may still live hundreds more.



Here it is from half a football field away.  It towers above the trees around it.  Sadly all the trees in this grove are under threat from an introduced fungus that is spread by dirty footwear.  Other trees only a few hundred feet away have already succumbed. 


Of interest to us was the aptly-named Kauri Museum.  A sprawling facility with everything from Kauri gum art to a complete reclaimed sawmill, it was fascinating and sobering at the same time. 

This 12 seat table is made from a single piece of 6” thick Kauri lumber. 


This is a 1500-year-old kauri stump that was buried in a swamp.   It was 400 years old when it was buried by a cataclysm of some kind.



You can get a feel for the scale of the logs the lumberjacks worked with.


This is the Billygoat Track Tramway we walked in Coromandel.  During its heyday, nary a tree was left standing.


The wealth of many early NZ families was prevalent in the incredibly-ornate furniture.


This piece is a landscape “painted” completely from carved wood inlay.


Because…NZ?


One room had a huge collection of Kauri gums, both fossilized and recent.  Many were carved into works of art.




This “hair” is made from heated and pulled kauri gum.






Kauri burls.


Victorian-era NZ home (upper class).  Missing of course is the film of soot from the wood-and-coal fireplace.


In order to get giant kauri logs down from remote places, massive dams were built.   When the dam was filled with logs and water, it was released, flooding them downstream.


Felled in 1960 at about 900 years old, this tree germinated 100 years before humans (Maori) discovered NZ. 




This is 300,000 year old kauri wood (not fossilized!).  It was buried in a tsunami, and the resin migrated into the wood preserving it.  That cylinder weighs 25lbs!


Some industrial, butter-churning machinery.


Spanning this whole room, a complete cross-section of a kauri trunk.  So much wood…  Kauri of  this size are worth big money, especially today as they are almost entirely protected.  These long contiguous sections were incredibly desirable for building the structure and rigging for large, oceangoing vessels. In 1900, this log would have been worth about $24 (not inflation-adjusted), in 1998, it would be over $15,000


A nearly complete steam powered sawmill was also on display.