Kauri Trees

As much as I hate photos of myself or most other people, this post has a predominant theme of me and trees. The tree species in particular is the Kauri Tree. Agathis Australis is surprisingly of the pine order, has a funky needle like scaled leaf and bears cones. These trees also obtain huge girths and are amongst the oldest tree species, both from a historical standpoint and from an actual life span stand point. That about sums up my knowledge of this amazing tree. Evidently they have been harvested to the point of rarity by ship builders in the 19th century and by lumber producers in more recent times. The wood grain is amazingly straight and tight.

As mentioned in the previous post, the Kauri has been found buried in ancient swamp and peat bogs. Industrious Kiwis have managed to find these trees, excavate them and process the wood into extremely valuable furniture, trinkets and knickknacks. We witnessed tables, chairs, benches and a variety of other furniture carved from solid pieces of Kauri that were in the tens of thousands of dollars per piece. A simple 24" turned bowel can run up to a thousand dollars. 30 to 50 thousand years old? Neat, aye?

This stairway is carved from one piece of wood. This tree is 35,000 years old. It spent 3000 years under the sun and stars, was knocked over in a storm and spent the next 32,000 years buried in the mud and soil. It was dug out of the ground in the 70s and took over a year to carve. How is that for a spiral staircase?