Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
On very last leg of our trip now. We carried on down the northwest coast as the westerly winds continued to howl in and we headed inlands towards the last remaining remnants of the giant Kauri forests that once covered the whole of Northland. These trees had taken hundreds/thousands of years to grow to absolutely colossal sizes by the time the first settlers arrived in the 1850s but by 1920 they haddestroyed virtually all the forests for the highly prized kauri wood and to clear the land for farming. I suppose it's the same as the magnificent oak forests that once covered most of England which were chopped down to provide the wood which enabled the Royal Navy to dominate the world's seas.(the Royal Navy also consumed vast quantities of kauris as their length & straightness made perfect spas & masts).
After a night in a quaint farmyard surrounded by friendly dogs, donkeys, horses etcwe caught the ferry across the Hokianga river and were soon in the Waipoua forest, the very last decent sized piece of forest containing giant Kauri trees. Just by the side of the road was "Tane Mahuta" the God of the forest, 52metres high with a trunk circumference of 13,8metres. The trunk alone represents 250m3 of wood ! ! They are the worlds second largest trees after the giant sequoias which we saw in California a few years ago. The trees are just as impressive with their huge straight trunk and tangled web of branches at the top which look like it's upside down with the roots at the top of the tree ! What's more impressive than the sequoias in California is the number of huge trees. In California there were about ½ dozen in an isolated grove. Here the virgin forest was full of them, from huge ones right up to absolute giants.
We spent a very pleasant afternoon walking in the forest and attempting to take pictures of these giants - it was of course impossible, they just won't fit in the view finder unless you're so far away that you lose the perspective of their size - and you can't get very far away anyway as you're in the middle of dense forest.
We spent that night at a campsite in another remnant of Kauri forest and after a walk in that forest we continued southwards to the Kauri Museum - easily the best museum we have seen in New Zealand -and then on towards the east coast north of Auckland where we found an idyllic spot on the cliffs overlooking the sea to spend our last two nights before we return the van and then head on home on our 43 hours Auckland to Lyon trip.
This is our last blog - we will shortly be on our way home. We hope you enjoyed following our trip with us for the last 3 months - we have enjoyed sharing it with you !
- comments