Sunday 6th March – Kauri trees NZ’s great natural resource – oops!



Te Matua Ngahere - Father of the forest, and 2000 yrs old



The Kauri tree is a relative of the pine, differing in the fact that it produces high quality, knot-free timber but takes a long while to do it. NZ was knee deep in these arboreal monsters until the settlers arrived.

In a way, it was understandable that they started clearing the trees – they had been “sold” land unseen, and arrived to find no townships; not even any roads – just deep forests. Once they started clearing the lands, they discovered the kauri trees produced remarkable timber; light, strong, pliable and virtually indestructible. What started as a necessity, soon turned into a lucrative business venture for many.

 Unfortunately, no-one realised at the time that the trees were slow growing ( 150 years to mature to anything of any size) most were felled by the turn of the century; and those they missed with the axe they burnt accidently.

The cleared land produced only poor grazing land in Northland,  which still looks poor and uneconomic even today.  The surviving small pockets of forest are now belatedly protected, with a just few  monster-size trees remaining to remind us of their magnificence – together with  photographs and memories.

 Another NZ biological cock-up .




We spent the morning looking at the surviving trees in the Waipoura Forest, Northland;  and the afternoon in the Kauri Museum which brilliantly records the history, machinery and people of the great logging era. It’s the sheer size of these trees that impresses;  together with the very high quality of the timber.

The area north of Auckland isn’t the most attractive bit of NZ, but you have to travel it just to experience this amazing/tragic part of the development/deforestation of the country.