Old-Time Kauri Bushmen, The

DESCRIPTION: "'Twas in the year of 1940, the day was calm and still When an old-time Kauri bushman wandered up a northern hill" to a kauri tree above his farm -- one of the last such trees. He plans to cut it down to build a home. He and the tree die at the same time
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1940 (source: Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ)
KEYWORDS: death home
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, p. 188, "(The Old-Time Kauri Bushmen)" (1 text)
NOTES [762 words]: Kauri trees are large and offer good wood; whalers and traders extensively used their wood for masts and spars in the early years of European exploration of New Zealand (Jackson/McRobie, p. 136). They are also the source of the "gum" (resin) that made gum-digging such a major trade in New Zealand. Little surprise that most of the trees were cut down, leaving only a few mature stands in wildlife refuges.
According to Ell, pp. 129-130, "The bleeding gum of the kauri tree (Agathis australis) was the basis of a major New Zealand industry from the middle of the 19th century into the 1930s. The gum was gathered by probing 'gumlands,' places where ancient kauri trees had fallen, and digging for it. The lumps of gum were scraped and washed for export, finding a ready market in the manufacture of varnishes, some paints and linoleum. Gumdiggers worked the bleak gumlands of the north Auckland region and also entered the forests, where some even bled the trees for quick reward. The practice of 'bleeding' was made illegal in 1905 as good trees became infected and began to die. The great days of the industry were the 1890s to 1910, but many men and women remained on the fields through the Depression of the 1930s, and some were still working there in the 1950s to 60s.... Synthetic substitutes killed the demand.... Find further detail in Bruce W. Hayward's pictorial history of the gum industry, Kauri Gum and the Gumdiggers (The Bush Press, Auckland, 2003).
NewZealandEncyclopedia, pp. 292-293, reports, "KAURI (Agatihs australis) is, on maturity, one of the largest trees found anywhere in the world, and one of the most commercially attractive, with a long straight, branchless trunk producing durable straight-grained timber, and a resin once greatly prized for the manufacture of high quality paints, varnishes and polishes. As a result, it was the basis of the first export trade from NZ and was cut and milled with a voracity hard to believe considering the technology of 19th-century NZ." In addition to its straight grain, it has few knots, so the Maoris prized it for canoes and the British, from the earliest times, used it for ships' spars. It also used to be used for homebuilding, but with the population so badly reduced, this is no longer permitted.
The tree is a conifer with relatives found in other Pacific regions; the New Zealand species is found mostly in the northern regions of the North Island. The largest one ever found is said to have had "a girth of 23.43 m[eters] and source 21.8 m[eters] to the first branch." The trees can apparently grow to be at least two thousand years old.
In 1844, John B. Williams, an American diplomat in New Zealand, wrote one of the first descriptions of the tree: "The Kaurie is a noble, majestick and stately tree, universally allowed to be the Queen of the forest; its noble looking head is seen towering above all the other trees of the forest, and it is easily distinguished from them by it bright green [color] and [is] generally pointed toward the top; its leaf is oval and it bears an extremely rich and beautiful [cone] in which the seed is contained under the scales. This valuable tree makes the best timber and boards in New Zealand. It saws easily and is a handsome wood lasting for some years, with the exception of knots it is not unlike the American hard pine, of a little different colour, shrinks in length, width and thickness; when exposed to the sun it warps very badly" (Williams/Kenny, p. 103). WIlliams says it was the most common structural wood in New Zealand, although he disliked it for that purpose, but says that "for spars none can be better."
"A Gum issues from this tree running down the branches & trunk, and fallen of[f] in large lumps imbeds itself in the earth, which makes quite good varnish. Some of the Gum is quite as transparent as Zanzibar Copal; some of it is opaque, caused by the length of time in the ground" (Williams/Kenny, p. 104).
In 1899, the busiest year for gum production, more than 11,000 tons were exported. With prices approaching £100 per ton, it was a major source of export income. (Jackson/McRobie, p. 136, says that it was the single biggest source of export income for New Zealand in the 1850s.) There were hundreds involved in the industry, many of them from Dalmatia.
Kauri trees depleted the soil, so at least they weren't cut to create farmland. But, where they had been cleared, the gum diggers came to recover the resin the trees had left behind. The Maori used raw gum as fuel, gum ash for tattoos, and even ate it on occasion. - RBW
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