Two Māori gum-diggers pose with a substantial pile of kauri gum, representing a week’s labour. Photo credit: Museum at Te Ahu
In the middle of the 19th century, New Zealand’s South Island struck gold. Gabriel Read, an Australian prospector who had previously searched for gold in California and Australia, discovered the precious metal in a creek bed near Lawrence. News of the find spread quickly, drawing thousands of prospectors from the dwindling goldfields of Australia, as well as from Europe, the United States, and China. Boomtowns such as Dunedin, Lawrence, Hokitika, and Thames expanded rapidly, with some populations quadrupling within just a few years.
Less than a thousand kilometers away, in New Zealand’s North Island, a different kind of gold rush was on. At its peak, at the turn of the 20th century, some 20,000 fortune-hunters were spread across some 800,000 acres of land looking not for metallic gold, but a treasure that closely resembled it—dried gum from kauri trees. Known as kauri gum, this natural treasure ranged in colour from chalky white to reddish-brown to deep black, but the most coveted was a rich, golden hue that could be polished to a glass-like finish. Kauri gum became one of New Zealand’s most striking and valued natural products.
Agathis australis, or kauri, is a coniferous tree with a remarkably narrow natural range. It grows only north of 38°S latitude, confined to the northernmost regions of New Zealand’s North Island. During the last ice age, advancing glaciers forced the species very far north, until its habitat was reduced to a small pocket in the North Island. As the climate warmed and the ice sheets retreated, kauri trees gradually expanded southward, reaching as far as Kawhia Harbour in the west and the eastern Kaimai Range.
Tāne Mahuta—the largest living kauri tree. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
The kauri grows tall and straight, making its timber highly sought after for shipbuilding and construction. Kauri trunk wood has been used in everything from furniture and bridges to fences and railway sleepers.
In addition to its valuable wood, the kauri produces a resin known as kauri gum, which held significant value for the Māori. The gum seeps from cracks in the tree’s bark and hardens upon contact with air, forming a natural sealant that protects the tree from further damage. As the kauri grows and sheds its bark, the hardened gum often falls to the ground around the base of the tree. When the tree eventually dies and decays, the gum remains in the soil. Over time, layers of earth or swamp may cover these deposits, preserving them underground for thousands of years.
The Māori called the resin kapia. When fresh and soft, they used it as a type of chewing gum. Older gum was sometimes soaked in the juice of the puha thistle to soften it and make it more palatable. Chewed gum was also used medicinally, believed to help treat vomiting, diarrhoea, and other digestive ailments.
The resin’s ability to burn brightly and with intense heat made it useful as a natural firelighter. Māori also burned kauri gum as torches. When the soot from the burning gum was collected, pounded, and mixed with oil, it created a thick black pigment that was used in traditional facial tattooing. Kauri gum was also crafted into jewellery, keepsakes, and small decorative objects.
A polished kauri gum. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
A mid 19th century carving in kauri gum of a Maori warrior. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
When British explorer James Cook landed at Mercury Bay on the Coromandel Peninsula in 1769, he came across resinous lumps, which he mistakenly believed had come from mangroves. It wasn’t until 1819 that a British missionary positively identified the substance as a product of the kauri tree.
Initially, kauri gum attracted little attention in Europe. According to a report in a Whangārei newspaper, in 1836 Captain James Clendon—Magistrate and Collector of Customs at Rawene on the Hokianga—sent a trial shipment of 20 tons of gum to London. The cargo was deemed worthless and dumped into the Thames. Sometime later, the story goes, a young boy playing along the riverbank found a piece of the gum and took it home, intrigued by what he called “a stone that floats.” His father, who was in the varnish trade, had the gum analysed and discovered it as a good ingredient for varnish, and an industry was born.
As demand for kauri gum grew in London and America, both Māori and European settlers turned to collecting it. In the early days, gum was easily found lying on the forest floor. But by 1850, most of the surface deposits had been gathered, and diggers began turning to the soil, probing and excavating to reach buried gum deposits.
Gum-digging was hard and dirty work. Men used long iron rods to probe the ground, searching for the tell-tale resistance of buried resin. Once located, the gum had to be dug up—sometimes from as deep as six meters below the surface—then cleaned, scraped, and sorted by colour and clarity.
Gum-digging camps sprang up across Northland and Auckland, drawing a diverse mix of settlers, including many Māori, European immigrants, and a significant number of Dalmatians from what is now Croatia. These diggers often lived in rough conditions, sheltering in huts made from scrub or canvas, enduring mud, isolation, and long days of labour in the swamps and forests.
Two men washing dishes in a tin basin at a gum climbers' camp by the Waipapa River, 1918. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
While Māori had long harvested gum for use in fire-starting, tattooing, and as a form of chewing gum, the commercial boom altered traditional practices. Many Māori joined the gum-digging economy, adapting their skills to the growing demand from overseas markets. For European and Dalmatian settlers, gum-digging offered one of the few ways to earn a living in the sparsely populated north.
The towns of Dargaville, Kaitaia, and Kaikohe became hubs of the gum industry, with merchants and exporters setting up warehouses to buy, process, and ship the resin. Schools, stores, and post offices followed, gradually transforming once-remote bushland into semi-permanent settlements. Gum exports grew into a major industry that helped fuel the development of Auckland. Between 1850 and 1950, more than 450,000 tons of kauri gum—valued at £25 million—were exported, primarily to Britain. There, it was used in the manufacture of varnish, paints, and linoleum.
However, the trade also had environmental consequences. Swamps were drained, forests cleared, and kauri stumps and roots dug out, sometimes with little regard for regeneration. As gumfields became increasingly scarce, some diggers resorted to deliberately cutting the bark of living kauri trees, returning months later to collect the hardened resin. These “bled gums” gave a temporary boost to production, but it soon became clear that the practice was severely damaging and often killing the trees. In response, the government banned the bleeding of kauri in all state forests in 1905.
Two gum climbers up a kauri tree near Anawhata. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Two gum-digger huts next to bush at Anawhata. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
By the 1930s, the development of cheaper synthetic alternatives for varnish and linoleum led to a sharp decline in demand for kauri gum. Alkyd-based varnishes, which were easier to apply and dried more quickly, soon replaced traditional copal and kauri-based products. Meanwhile, the rise of vinyl flooring effectively signalled the end of linoleum’s popularity.
At the same time, the remaining gumfields had become increasingly depleted. Extracting kauri gum grew more difficult and expensive, making it less competitive. By the mid-20th century, the kauri gum industry had virtually vanished.
Today, kauri gum is a rare commodity. Polished pieces occasionally surface in antique shops, tourist outlets, or online marketplaces, often fetching high prices due to their beauty, history, and scarcity.
With the decline of the gum-digging trade and widespread deforestation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the kauri forests were left fragmented and diminished. By the mid-20th century, conservationists began to recognize the ecological and cultural importance of preserving what remained of these ancient trees, some of which had been growing for over a thousand years.
Workers scrape gum at E. Mitchelson & Co., Auckland. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Gum sorters at work at E. Mitchelson & Co, Auckland. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Efforts to protect the kauri gained momentum in the 1950s and 60s, leading to the establishment of reserves and national parks such as Waipoua Forest Sanctuary. This forest is home to Tane Mahuta, the largest known living kauri tree, and Te Matua Ngahere, believed to be the second largest living kauri tree.
More recently, however, a new threat has emerged— kauri dieback disease. Caused by the soil-borne pathogen Phytophthora agathidicida, this disease infects the tree’s roots, gradually starving it of nutrients and water until it dies. The disease spreads through soil movement, on boots, animal hooves, vehicle tires, and even water.
Because there is no cure, conservation efforts have focused on containing the spread of the disease by closing or rerouting walking tracks through kauri forests, installing cleaning stations to disinfect footwear, and raising public awareness about the risks. Scientists are also investigating resistant trees and methods of early detection, as they work to protect the country’s remaining kauri forests and honour the ecological and cultural heritage of these remarkable trees.
References:
# Kauri gum and gum digging, Teara.govt.nz
# Northland’s Buried Treasure, NZ Geo
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