Kauri Gum Digging In The Far North

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 36 (Supplement)

Kauri Gum Digging In The Far North

Ancient Forests Yield Golden Resin For many long years a recognised industry in the far north of Auckland, where long ago stood ancient forests of giant kauri trees, has been the seeking of fossil gum in the spongy marshlands. In the past, New Zealand has exported kauri gum .to the quantity of 430,000 tons, to the value of nearly £23,500,000. The extensive kauri forests, which, in the early days, cloaked northern acres of New Zealand, no longer exist. They were burned at about the time when first the Maoris migrated from Hawaiki. Only their resin remains, in rich deposits under the earth’s surface. Captain Cook records being shown some of this golden substance, not unlike amber. The Maori found few practical uses for this material; but early in the progress of European settlement he found the white people were willing to trade in it at price which made it well worth while hunting the swamps for gum. At first he contented himself with the surface deposits, but later it became necessary to delve deep. The ingenious Native also devised the scheme of climbing the standing kauri trees for the knobs of resin that exuded from wounds in their trunks.

Birth Of The Trade In 1844 the first shipments of kauri gum were made by Messrs. Brown and Campbell, but not until twenty years later did the trade really begin to flourish. Until then it was a Maori prerogative, but about the ’sixties the pakcha took a hand, and in the ’nineties, when the trade reached its height, numbers of Dalmatian, Austrian and Slavonic migrants entered the field; many of these foreigners, old men now, arc still probing the marshlands with their long steel spears in search of the amber gum. At the beginning of the century there were about 4000 whites and 1000 Maoris in the gum-prospecting business. The export figure was ten thousand tons a year, at an average price of £6O a ton. But the European market was shattered by the war, and since then markets, have been smaller and prices lower. The industry dwindled until, in 1932, there were only a few hundred diggers at most. Lately, however, it has found better times, and is now increasing in scope. The gum is used in the manufacture of linoleum and varnish, and is sold to tourists as a curio.