20 Sept: Kauri but no Kiwi

Today we drove south from Ahipara to Waipoua forest park to look at the Kauri trees. We would show this as a single Google Map inset but we found a gap in Google's coverage. We started with a drive through the Mangemuka Gorge, a twisting and hilly route through dense forest. This led us to the Rangiora-Rawene car ferry.

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One of only a few car ferries in New Zealand, this small boat bridges the Hokianga Harbour, a huge deep-water ocean harbour that is practically unused. Google maps doesn't know about this ferry and won't route over it. But it's really there.

By the way, notice the blossoms in the left edge of that picture? They are the blossoms of the Coral Tree. Coral trees are blooming all over the North Island.

Now on the South shore of the Hokianga Harbour we drove out to the end to see the sea.

From here we drove on down through Waipoua Forest, looking at Kauri trees, then on to camp near Trounson Forest Park.

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The Kauri tree rivals the Sequoia for size: not quite as tall but just as thick, or thicker. (Kauri should be pronounced "cowry" but the locals say something that sounds like "kerry.") Here's what we're talking about. This is Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), the largest living Kauri:

That tree is a bit over 4 meters thick, and it is about half the thickness of the largest recorded Kauri (which of course is long gone). It's about 50 feet high to the crotch.

Here's our van passing between two younger Kauri.

Before 1850, New Zealand had many great forests of Kauri. However, young Kauri (like the Sequoia Sempervirens) are straight and tall, perfect for masts and spars of sailing ships. And older Kauri can be sawn into planks of very dense, fine-grained wood that makes great carpentry and beautiful furniture. So from 1850 through about 1920, the forests of New Zealand (like the forests of northern California) were full of industrious lumberjacks sawing down the great trees and carting the immense logs out with ox trains to the coast for sawmills. Now there are very few small groves of Kauri left.

A second strange invasion followed the lumberjacks. Kauri grow in moist swampy soil, and when a Kauri is injured it exudes a copious glob of resin that hardens. So generations of Kauri died and their resin-blobs fell into the swamp and fossilized into an amber-like substance.

Then it was discovered that Kauri "gum" made excellent varnish, and a gum-rush developed. Hundreds of ragged but hopeful prospectors swarmed over the logged-off Kauri forests probing the soil for the hard lumps of gum, digging them up, and selling them to merchants.

Tomorrow's post will have some pictures of Kauri gum and logs.

This day we signed up for a Kiwi walk in the evening. A guide led a group of eleven of us (we were the only Americans; the others were tourists From Australia and England) on a 90-minute walk through the Kauri forest looking in the undergrowth with a red flashlight ("torch") but to no avail. We heard a male Kiwi call, but saw none. We did see the Weta, the giant cricket-like insect, in fairly large numbers. But no Kiwi.