We had only a short drive down the coast to the famed Waipoua Forest, home to the last great kauri trees. Kauris grow enormously tall, thick and straight, with few low branches making them ideal for timber and great Maori canoes. The arrival of European settlers in the 1800's signaled the destruction of these magnificent and ancient forests. There remains only about 3% of the native forests that once covered much of the land. Trees were felled to build the new settlements, and the milled lumber was shipped worldwide (including to San Francisco, where it was used to rebuild after the 1906 earthquake, according to Danny). Luckily, the tiny patch of Waipoua was saved due to its inaccessibility. The SH 12 wasn't built until the 1920's, when the oldest trees were identified, who are now around 2,000 years old. The most famous is Tane Mahuta (God of the Forest), the largest living kauri, who is conveniently located just minutes into the forest. Nothing can quite prepare you for the awesome size and majesty of this tree. Even after seeing tons of photos and reading the stats (168ft tall, 46ft girth) I was still taken aback by really just how tall and beautiful it is. It seemed very lonely, in a grove of lusher green, with only a few young kauris around.
1 km down the road was the entrance to the kauri walks, where the other famous kauris lived. We took the first trail to the Yakas Kauri, which was supposed to be very impressive, and it didn't disappoint. The trail led through amazing sub-tropical rainforest filled with tall brilliant nikau palms, prehistoric looking black fern trees towering above, and many slender kauris with hosts of epiphytes growing in their canopies.
The Yakas kauri, only slightly smaller than Tane Mahuta, was partly encircled by a raised boardwalk, allowing us to get up close and personal with the tree. It seemed much larger from such a close perspective! We also saw the Four Sisters, four trunks growing out of the same (or merged) roots, and The Father of the Forest, Te Matua Ngahere, who is not as tall as Tane Mahuta but much wider (52ft girth) and flatter. It seemed that the tree had recently suffered some damage to its upper branches, and there were many dead or damaged trees in the immediate area. (Possibly due to severe storms in 2007?)
After much needed lunch, we headed south toward Auckland. On recommendation from our lovely Globetrekkers hostess, Sue, we stopped in Matakohe at the Kauri Museum. It was a little recreation town from the kauri logging era, complete with creepy mannequins modeled after actual people. We went to the B&B cafe for coffee and yummy cakes, and Rachel made a new cat friend who happily sat on her lap while drooling all over itself and the table. We hadn't planned on going in the museum, but since we were already there we went. Unfortunately we only had 40mins to look around the whole thing, which was impossible. It was an excellent museum, with tons of artifacts, kauri logs and planks, and milling machinery. Some planks from swamp kauris had been preserved in swamp mud for 44,000 years before being dug up in the last century or so. The best feature was one wall painted with rings representing the trunk girths of the largest known kauris, of which at least the 3 largest documented are no longer living. We also got to peek at the shining gum room, housing a beautiful collection of amber kauri gum. The gum is the sap from the kauri, which solidifies, is then buried and fossilizes into hard amber gems, sometimes perfectly preserving tiny insects, and some of which was more than 40 million years old! Gum digging was a big industry alongside logging, sadly supplying the priceless treasures to manufacture lacquers and linoleum.
It was dusky as we departed Matakohe for the last leg of our drive. We arrived in Auckland over the Harbor Bridge a few hours later, and got to have a look at the colorful city skyline. It was lovely, but very strange to be in a big, sprawling city with multi lane roads and traffic and getting lost.
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