Waipoua Tree-Climber Is A Man Of Parts

Northern Advocate, 8 March 1947, Page 3

Waipoua Tree-Climber Is A Man Of Parts

(By Frank Molesworth

SUNSHINE laced the forest floor into a pattern with the mottled bark of a mighty bole rising huge and true into the sky. And 50 people watched as Nicholas Yakas walked up the great kauri.

Wicked inch-long spikes extended from his toes and braced to steel shoe-grips that resembled nothing so much as rabbit-traps. Driving a short iron hook into the tree with each hand alternately and jabbing his toe-spikes in with resolute steps, he literally walked up the vertical face of the forest king until he disappeared among the spread of enormous boughs

Yakas walked from ground level to the first bough, 30ft up, in just 11 seconds.

Shutters clicked and movie cameras whirred while necks craned farther back and mouths hung ever more and more open while the climber climbed. He swung a long rope across a bough and climbed into a bosun’s chair, on which he swung his way, happy as a boy of 10, round the great wooden cylinder, almost completing the circle without touching toe to bark. SIMPLE AS IT LOOKED For the benefit of the photographers, Yakas was only too happy to do it all over again. Yes, it was as simple as it looked. He certainly made it appear so. Yet the equipment and technique were developed in New Zealand, and overseas foresters have gone away with samples and instructions to put into use in their own lands. Now Yakas carried a pikau—a gunny-sack—across his waist. When he came down from his tour of inspection among the jutting branches at the kauri’s head, he spilled out from his pikau about 10 lb of gum. The State Forest Service does not retain Nicholas Yakas on its payroll just to climb trees for the wonderment of visitors.

He is a gumdigger—or was a gumdigger for the best part of 35 years.

Today he digs gum from the treetops.

He has spent the past six months and will spend the next six months “doing’’ Waipoua Forest. Once in five years or so he combs the bush for gum secreted by the frees from injuries suffered ifl the natural hazards of growing. NO DELIBERATE BLEEDING Yakas does not bleed the trees. In fact, the State Forest Service people would be happy to shoot the man who did. He is <he only man they have trusted to collect gum in Waipoua without encouraging it by deliberately bleeding the trees. The gum comes down from the tree in varied shapes and colours. Most frequent is the “candle” gum. formed by slow dripping action info a stalactite in exactly the same manner as a lighted candle runs its melted grease down its side. There is also the white, soft resin of immature gum that will never harden.

Here, he tells you, break a piece off and chew it—it’s better than all your chewing-gum. Amazingly, it is. And it lasts in the mouth for hours with no diminution of size or unpleasant taste. DOWN IN THE GUMSIIED

Yakas sells all his gum himself, paying a set royalty of 25/- a cwt to the State Forest Service. Down in the river flat, with the waters of the Waipoua stream a few yards away bubbling over <heir round stones and with the two wooded walls of the valley pressing down, Yakas

has a small army hut. In fact, Yakas has two huts there. One is his living quarters, the other is full of gum. Sacks of gum by the door and along the walls, lumps of gum neatly arranged along a high shelf or piled in great heaps on his wide bench, scraped or ready for scraping. And, of course, gum chips and dust all over the floor, all over everything. Yakas asked his forester-employers for permission to train a youth in the gentle art of tree-climbing and gumcollecting. They found him a trustworthy young Maori from an old family living on the forest’s southern fringe. But the young fellow could not be induced to come along when the big inspection was on—he was far too nervous of crowds. Not that he cannot climb; Yakas will fell you he shins up a kauri as if it were a tar-barrel in the backyard. lIIS ADRIATIC ISLE Yakas is a hospitable man. He will tell you of the gumdigging days of his past, of his life among the tall timbers, even of his own Dalmatian isle of Korcula (the “c” is soft, as “s”) in the sunny Adriatic, which he left more than 40 long years ago to try his young man’s luck in a fresh young land. He loves his Korcula yet but he loves his foster-land and its green northern forests no less. It has given him many things the old land could not give.