Kaipara; or, experiences of a settler in North New Zealand

by P. W. Barlow

I became familiarised with hoeing, digging, pruning fruit trees, and the use of the axe. The latter is a most necessary accomplishment in this part of the colony, as to the axe every one trusts for his supply of fuel. When I first attempted to wield it, each blow struck jarred my hands and arms tremendously, and at the same time made little impression on the wood; but at last I caught the trick, and am now a fairly good axeman.

Small tea-tree, or "Manuka," to use the native name, is principally used for firing. The wood is hard and close-grained, and gives out a great amount of heat. It grows in large and dense patches called "scrub." The trees in the scrub generally stand about a foot apart, run up straight for some twelve feet, and then break into a small bunch of branches. If tea-tree happens to be isolated, it becomes a spreading tree of fair dimensions, though it never grows sufficiently large to be employed much in carpentering. It is always more or less in flower—a beautiful small white flower—with which at some seasons of the year it is completely covered. Not only is tea-tree universally used for firewood, but it supplies the material of which most of the fences up here are composed, and is preferred to any other wood for wheel-spokes. It is, therefore, one of the most useful natural productions of the colony.

North New Zealand boasts of a great variety of splendid timber, of which the Kauri pine (Dammara australis) takes the lead. These giants of the forest attain a girth sometimes of between forty and fifty feet, and grow up perfectly straight for sixty or seventy feet before throwing out branches. They reminded me when I first saw them of the toy trees with little round stands that used to be sold with boxes containing wooden animals. If the reader can imagine one of these toy trees magnified some six or seven hundred times, he will have a fair idea of what a Kauri looks like. Its foliage resembles somewhat that of the ornamental shrub known as the "Monkey plant," the leaves being stiff and glossy.

The Kauri is used more extensively than any other New Zealand wood for building purposes. It is a magnificent timber, and if properly seasoned, neither shrinks nor warps. Very few of the bush owners, however, can afford to let timber lie idle for any length of time, and therefore the majority of the Kauri used is not seasoned, and shrinks very much both ways. So much is this the case, and so unreliable is the timber considered through insufficient seasoning, that a clause has been inserted in the specification for the New Auckland Custom House, now about to be erected, which states that Baltic timber, and not Kauri, is to be used for sashes, architraves, mouldings, &c. As Kauri is very easily worked, and admits of a splendid polish, it is greatly to be regretted that with such timber in the province the architect should have deemed it necessary to specify Baltic timber. It is nevertheless true, however; and the cause may be summed up in six words, "High wages and want of capital," the great bane of New Zealand, felt not only in the timber trade, but in all other industries that have been established.

In getting out the Kauri, an immense and at times reckless destruction of young trees takes place, and for this reason the time is not far distant when the Kauri pine will be a tree of the past.

From an official report of Mr. T. Kirk, F.L.S., Chief Conservator of State Forests—for a copy of which I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. S. P. Smith, Assistant Surveyor-General—it appears that the total extent of available Kauri forest now existing does not exceed two hundred thousand acres, and placing the average yield at the high rate of fifteen thousand superficial feet per acre, the Kauri at the present demand will be exhausted in twenty-six years. If, however, the demand increases in the same ratio as it has shown during the last ten years, it will be worked out in fifteen years. When we consider that the Kauri timber trade is one of the mainstays of the North Auckland district, this is a most alarming statement. The export trade amounted last year to the value of £136,000—more than five times as much as the timber trade of all the rest of the colony put together; and it is difficult to see what is to take its place when the last Kauri has been felled. In Mr. Kirk's report no allowance is made for probable loss by bush fires, which in the dry weather are constantly breaking out, and which are generally ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to the carelessness of gumdiggers or to vindictiveness. Fires in the heavy Kauri bush last a long time when they once get hold, and do an immense amount of damage. There is a Kauri bush at the present time on fire in this riding of Matakohe which has been alight for the last five or six months. A large quantity of timber must be destroyed in this way, and the contingency of fire further lessens the probable duration of the Kauri forests of North New Zealand.

The task of felling and getting the timber out of the bushes is a difficult and dangerous one. The country north of Auckland, where Kauri abounds, is usually very broken, and seldom admits of a tramway being laid down to carry the logs on. When the timber is on high ground, the usual method adopted is to cut the logs into suitable lengths with cross-cut saws, move them by means of timber jacks and immense teams of bullocks to the brow of a convenient incline, and let them slide down a well-greased shoot composed of young Kauri trees, a great number of which are thus annually destroyed.

If the bush happens to be on the borders of the Kaipara, the logs are placed behind booms until enough are collected to make a raft. If, however, it is situated some little distance from deep water, the logs are laid in the bed of an adjacent creek, higher up in which a dam is formed and the water stored. When sufficient logs are collected, and sufficient water stored behind the dam, the sluices are opened, and the logs washed down to the Kaipara, where they are gathered, chained together, and towed to their destination.

Ordinary Kauri timber presents, when polished or varnished, a wavy appearance, and is darker in some places than in others; but occasionally Kauri is mottled, and when this is the case it is very valuable for veneering purposes, being worth from £3 to £5 per hundred superficial feet, while the average price of ordinary Kauri is only ten shillings per hundred feet.