Color/Appearance: Pale yellowish white to golden brown heartwood. Sapwood typically same color as heartwood. Due to the tree’s large size, kauri is nearly always clear and knot-less, with minimal wastage.

Agathis australis, commonly known by its Māori name kauri (pronounced “Ko-ree”), is a coniferous tree in the family Araucariaceae, found north of 38°S in the northern regions of New Zealand’s North Island….

Fiji is a net exporter of wood products, including pine chips, sawnwood and wood-based panels. There is a small export trade of high-value finished products. The expansion of the export of these could make a significant contribution to the economy, particularly when mahogany timber is put on the international market.

Bergman claims to have been the first to mill swamp kauri. “It can smell like rotten eggs when the saw gets into it.” Most timber sold is from the other end of the time scale, though — cut when still green.

Submerged for aeons in the peat bogs of New Zealand’s north, swamp kauri is one of the world’s most valuable and exquisite timbers, and an unparalleled resource for global climate science.

While carbon dating is yet to be carried out, swamp kauri are prehistoric trees which can be buried for anywhere between 800 and 50,000 years under peat swamps in the North Island. At one time it was valued at over $10,000 per cubic metre, making it one of the most expensive timbers in the world.

Ancient Kauri

Construction workers at the site of what will be New Zealand’s largest retail store in Henderson, West Auckland, made the discovery of a “significant cache” of swamp kauri, which can be valued up to $10,000 per cubic metre.

Swamp kauri timber, also known as ancient kauri, is milled from kauri trees that have been buried and preserved in peat swamps for between 800 and 60,000 years. Some kauri were up to 2,000 years old when they fell. Swamp kauri is a broad term applied to timber that varies in age and the way it’s been preserved.

The Kauri Tree Pronounce it like “co-ree” in English, or click here to hear it spoken. Kauri is a staple part of to our New Zealand way of life.

Māori uses Māori called kauri gum kāpia. They chewed it like chewing gum. They used gum to start fires, because it burns easily. They mixed the soot from burnt gum with oil or fat, and used it in moko (facial tattoos).

Highly flammable, the gum was also used as a fire-starter, or bound in flax to act as a torch. Burnt and mixed with animal fat, it made a dark pigment for moko tattooing. Kauri gum was also crafted into jewellery, keepsakes, and small decorative items.

However, in general, young gum that is not fossilised is known as Kauri Gum. It is readily melted and is not able to be polished to a high shine.

Kauri pine, also called Dammar Pine, (Agathis australis), a resinous timber conifer of the family Araucariaceae, native to the North Island of New Zealand. The tree sometimes reaches 45 metres (150 feet) in height, with a diameter up to 7 m (23 ft).

Māori uses They chewed fresh gum from trees, and softened older gum for chewing by soaking it in water and mixing it with the milk of pūwhā (common sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus).

Men, women and children. Most gum diggers were male, but in some places the women and children – especially Māori – also dug for gum. Many diggers were single men, who lived two or three to a hut. Others lived on the gumfields with their wives and families.

a person who digs for fossilized kauri gum in a gum field.

Literally preserved: though the gum-digging finally died out in the 1950s after over 100 years of activity, the gum itself, and the kauri trees that produced it, date back up to 150,000 years.