The Satcher's New Zealand Adventure: Matakohe and Thames

2015-01-07

We pulled out of Dargaville reasonably early after a fitful night's sleep and drove to Matakohe to see the Matakohe Kauri museum, recommended by our tour book. The museum is fantastic and provides a great look into the early pioneer days in New Zealand. The focus of the museum is the great Kauri trees and the logging that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries. The trunks of the trees are massive and can be six or seven meters in diameter, thirty or more meters tall and weigh in excess of ten tons. The work of cutting and milling the trees was equally massive. The lumber is beautiful with almost no knots and a very straight grain. A docent at the museum told us that during the logging days, any man-made structure in New Zealand was made of Kauri, but most of the lumber was exported. Logging continued through the 1960s and the trees were protected by law in 1973.

An ancillary industry associated with the Kauri involved harvesting the hardened sap from ancient forests. These bushmen were called gumdiggers and they would probe around in swampy areas with long pikes trying to find chunks of sap. When they found an old stump, the would excavate the area by hand to collect all the sap, which was used in the manufacture of linoleum flooring, glue and, when polished, decorative items. The museum has a huge collection of polished Kauri gum.

Outside the Kauri museum

A custom built lathe

Overhead view of the sawmill

Visualization of Kauri trunk size

Butter churn

Old technology

Kauri Gum

We completed our journey for the day in Thames on the southwest corner of the Coramandel peninsula, a large logging center back in the day and the center of the late 19th century New Zealand gold rush. We had dinner in an old hotel downtown and I'm pretty sure the doors, windows, and trimwork were Kauri lumber. As we wound down dinner, Steven discovered a familiar tune on the jukebox, Sweet Home Alabama. It was worth a dollar to listen and we all got a little homesick.

When we got back to our motel, the night clerk brought a rollaway for one of our kids. Two nights prior, I had tried to book the room online, but it wouldn't let me list both kids. I called the clerk that night to book with the motel directly, but the old codger wouldn't go downstairs to list us. I asked if it would be okay to book the room with all four of us and he said yes. When he brought the bed, he gave us some guff about having too many people in the room and how we would have to pay extra for the kids (which I knew), yadda, yadda, yadda. I then reviewed with him our discussion of two nights ago and he told me I shouldn't have booked the room. I told him he shouldn't have told me it was okay to book and sent him packing. It seems that customer service isn't particularly high in the Kiwi business ethos.