THE UNSCATHED KAURI
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New Zealand, specifically the
North Island has some remarkable deposits of a fossil resin. Known as kauri gum this
form of ancient resin has been known about and used by the ancient and aboriginal people
of New Zealand for thousands of years. Research and academic investigation of this remarkable substance is sadly lacking and few books and articles are published in relation to this topic. The author of this web site has only been able to trace two significant publications on this material, they are:
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Nearly all of the following information has been taken from A. H. Reeds book and paraphrased for inclusion here, were this is the case the text has been italicised, but not indented`.
The age of kauri gum appears to extend over a much greater range than was first thought. Many scientists have until recently believed that most of the recovered gum was only 2 or 3 thousand years old. The resin, which was dug up in many thousands of tonnes during the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, may in fact only have be a few thousand years old. But at Hilkurangi, located near Whangarei, limestone deposits some 300 feet deep have revealed fossilised resin. Similarly the coalfields at Lower Waikato in the North and the mouth of the Clutha River have revealed fossilised resin. Both these sources date back to a Tertiary and Mesozoic age.
Dr J. R. Hosking of the Department of Scientific Research wrote:
‘An examination of the resin found associated with the coal at Coal Creek [near Roxburgh], left no doubt as to its identity with Kauri resin.’ Although the essential oil had almost disappeared, sufficient was left to identify the smell so typical of kauri resin. The existence of a Tertiary kauri forest was placed ‘beyond all reasonable doubt.’
In May of 1956 the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research announced that, by the radiocarbon method of wood testing,
‘the laboratory’s work had included the oldest specimen so far dated anywhere in the world. This was a piece of kauri wood from One Tree Point, Ruakaka, near Whangarei which proved to be 36,000 years old. The specimen was tested twice with the same result.’
Reed reports that a geological survey in Auckland indicated that kauri forests grew in the region of Otara up to 60,000 years ago and indicates that they survived the last ice age.
The source tree for kauri gum is the Agathis Australis a still existing species. The trees can still be found in isolated pockets but are scarce due to heavy timber felling in previous years and have also gradually declined due presumably to a slightly colder climate than they are best suited to.
This would mean certain gum deposits exceed the age of many copal deposits in South America. The author has in his possession verified pieces of kauri gum, which pass the usual tests for discriminating between amber and copal. A review therefore of some of New Zealand’s gums and re-classification of them as amber might be overdue.
The Maori, the aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand used and exploited the gum long before the European settlers arrived in 1769, led by Captain Cook. On the 16th November in the same year Cook wrote in his diary:
‘In speaking of Mercury Bay I had forgot to mention that the Mangrove trees found there produce a resinous substance very much like Resin…..We found it at first, in small lumps upon the Sea Beach, afterwards found it sticking to the Mangrove Trees, and by that means found out from whence it came.’
He was mistaken of course, what he had discovered was a secondary deposit of the gum. The resin had only lodged within the roots of the mangrove and had originated from kauri forests elsewhere.
Momeron, a French explorer arrived a year later after Cook. L’Horne, a first lieutenant on board the St Jean Baptiste made the following remarks in his journal:
‘One finds on these coasts, amongst the seaweed which the tide leaves behind, some pieces of resin or bitumen, nearly round in shape, of a yellowish colour, transparent, friable, light, inflammable, of a much sweeter scent than that of then resin, but somewhat similar. This stuff, which seems to me remarkable, and worthy of the notice of the naturalist, seems to belong to the amber family.’
L’Horne went on to further speculate that a deposit of kauri gum must lie off shore. Reed in his 1971 publication confirms that he had picked up pieces of tide worn gum a few miles North of Doubtless Bay on the Houhora Peninsula. The coincidental similarity between this and Samland Peninsula on the Baltic Coast is a fascinating one.
Several reports are given of the native Maori using the gum as a form of chewing gum and members of particular groups or clans would pass pieces round and carefully save and retain prized pieces for later consumption and chewing. The early European settlers took up a similar practice. Gilbert Mair, a visiting ship’s captain wrote in the early 19th century:
‘The old gum was kept in boiling water till quite plastic; then juice, procured from the milk of the puwha (native thistle) was mixed with it to make it soft and elastic for masticating.’
Nearly all research on kauri gum eventually leads to descriptions and stories of the famous gum diggers. These were a particularly hardy, resilient and cosmopolitan group of peoples whom during the 19th and early 20th century made a living from digging up the buried deposits of gum that the vanished kauri forest has left behind. The work consisted of backbreaking digging using equipment little better than a every day spade. The best apparently being a ‘Skelton’ä spade with a partially steel plated and riveted shaft capable of standing up to the rigours of the gum fields.
Many diggers also carried a steel spike known as a gum spear for locating the resin beneath the soil.
They would build rough huts and work perhaps all year or seasonally, simply digging and selling their hoards of cleaned and roughly gathered resin to traders and whole sale merchants.
The areas where the gum diggers found and gathered the resin were known as the gum fields
These areas extended from Lower Waikato and the Coromandel Peninsula across to the North Cape. The total area was some 1,500,000 to 1,800,000 according to A.H. Reed. This would appear to indicate that at some time in New Zealand’s distant past practically the whole of the North Island was under a kauri forest.
The total tonnage that was dug up and exported to both Europe and North America is phenomenal. Figures published in A. H. Reed’s book ‘The Gum Diggers’ have been transposed into a graph here for easier consumption.
As can be seen from this chart the pinnacle of gum extraction took place during the transition from the 19th into 20th century. According to these records a total of 453,084 tons of gum were sent abroad for processing and re manufacturer between 1853 and 1971. The author suspects these figures are if anything on the conservative side and unaccounted exports would increase this figure still further both within this time range and outside it. (Notice the significant tale off of exports during both World Wars and the 1930’s depression.)
The majority of this export would have been made into lacquers and varnishes for use on furniture and decorative goods, including some musical instruments. The gum was also used extensively in the production of linoleum, an early floor-covering product. This declined following the introduction of synthetic substitutes in the late 1930’s.
An excellent Internet resource on kauri gum, which I have made several links to in this section, can be found at the Matakohe Museum’s web site.
Two books that are now sadly out of print but are worth reading for their content on kauri gum are:
Quest for the Kauri
E.V. Sale
Reed Publications
0 589 01123 5
The GumDiggers – The story of kauri gum
A. H. Reed
Reed Publications
0 589 00732 7
