What caused the disappearance of the countrywide covering, and especially the more recent and mysterious absence of living trees on the rich gumfields of the Aupouri Peninsula, is a matter of much and varied speculation. Apart from an isolated sprinkling in the vicinity of Spirits Bay in the far north, the peninsular area between Kaitaia and Cape Reinga was denuded. Kauri will grow, and do grow if tended, in Dunedin and Christchurch, well south of the more recent cut-off line for naturally occurring kauri at the 38th parallel (Kawhia to Opotiki).īut by the time the voyaging forbears of the Maori arrived, kauri forest covered only pockets, and larger tracts of the area between Kawhia in the south and Kaitaia in the north. Kauri gum has been found in lignite seams at Gore in Southland and associated with coal at Roxburgh in Central Otago. For the purposes of the tale, the vernacular “kauri gum” is at least expedient.īefore the arrival of Homo sapiens, and thus before the products of nature were seen as raw material, put there exclusively for our picking, kauri forest covered much of Aotearoa.
Thereby hangs the tale, much of it apocryphal, part nostalgia, frequently tragic, of kauri gum and Northland’s continuing tendency to boom and bust. Resin less than four million years old, which has begun to harden but does not yet have the physical properties of amber, is called copal, and “kauri copal” is a term favoured by Northern Hemisphere varnish makers of the past. Amber is a generic term for fossil resins aged over four million years exuded by extinct conifers. Sieves were used to separate smaller gum nuggets from surrounding soil and debris. All gum had to be treated in this way if it was to fetch a good price. A lone gumdigger scrapes the oxidised rind from the gum he has collected by resting the lump on a stake and using a jack knife to clean it. Stories tell of yields of two hundredweight of crutch gum from one tree, and of massive subterranean deposits of over 600lbs in a single nugget. Over the aeons, layers of forest debris cover the gum to depths of up to 100 metres. Over the thousands of years of life of the largest of these leviathans the resin runs down the tree, collecting in the forks where it becomes crutch gum, pouring from the roots as sugar gum, or accumulating in frozen drips and long wax-like stalactites on the bark as candle gum. Some are plant derived, like gum arabic from Acacia or the algae agar and carageen. Gums, on the other hand, are substances that swell in water to form gels or sticky solutions. The guardian of the tree, resin washes out and entraps boring insects, seals over the ravages of wind, lightning and animal damage, and prevents the entry of bacteria and fungi that may cause disease. It is a resin exuded by the fabled New Zealand conifer Agathis australis in response to injury.
Quite apart from any poetic deficiencies in the name, strictly speaking, the stuff is not gum at all. A word that might imply mysterious landscapes and the hopes and dreams of generations, as well as encompassing the beautiful and rare. Not a sturdy, lumpy word like gum, but something signifying liquid gold. Over time, the trickles of resin seeping out of the tree can form huge lumps of solidified gum, some of which have weighed as much as 250 kilograms. produce resin in response to injury or attack by other organisms. These mammoth trees, which can live for a thousand years or more. Written by Joanne McNeill Photographed by Arno GasteigerĪll conifers produce resins, but kauri is one of the most prodigious bleeders.
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