Today we pulled up to the Kauri Museum again for a second look. Right at the entrance there’s this short origin story written in both Māori and English about how the world began.
“In the beginning, in nothingness, the sky father and the earth mother lay together in a tight embrace. Tired of living in cramped darkness their children tried to separate them. Tane, god of the forest succeeded. In the form of a kauri he pushed earth and sky apart…
… and light filled the world”
So, the kauri isn’t just an old tree in these stories — it’s basically sacred.
Which makes it kinda strange that this well organized museum mostly tells the story of the settlers who chopped down those same sacred forests to make farms, houses, furniture, and pretty much everything else.
After that we headed north on Highway 12 to the Waipoua Kauri Forest to see Tane Mahuta — the absolute unit of a tree that’s believed to be the biggest kauri in New Zealand and like the fifth biggest tree on the planet. Honestly… insane.
Then we had a two-hour drive over to our accommodation in Opua on the east coast.