Kauri (Agathis australis) are New Zealands most famous trees – mostly due to their huge size, their amazing age and their woods excellent quality. Have to see them when once being here, now ..
The Kauri tree’s valuable hardwood has been used for many purposes from building materials like for houses, ships and railway tracks to furniture. In the pioneer times during the 1800s it was hard physical work to get the huge tree trunks out of the rainforest. The industrial revolution and use of machines made it easier then .. until there were hardly any of those old huge trees left anymore. Nowadays the kauri trees in nature reserves like the Waipoua forest are carefully looked after. Still, you can have a look at them using a forest track to the trees. There are quite a few kauri trees in the forest, from the size of a birch to three times the size of a beech. And those are just the young and small ones. The oldest kauri tree left, the giant Tane Mahuta (Maori language, means Lord of the forest) belongs to a totally different category: It is not a few hundred but about 2000 (!) years old and its stem is 4.4 m in diameter. You feel like an ant next to it (although you can’t stay right next for it, there is a fence for protecting the trees from too many people walking over the soil nearby it and thereby damaging it’s delicate surface roots). And – this tree is not even the oldest one which has existed in those forests. There are stems from even older and bigger trees which have been cut down some tens of years ago ..
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