To PaihiaNov 6, 2005
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Captions Later
Waiwera to Paihia - 318 KM - 11/6/05
Todays drive was a loop to the West Coast and then North vis the Kurai Coast Highway to Paihia - a resort town in the NE of Northland. Many consider Paihia the best spot in NZ for a "Holiday".
It was another drive through rolling hills farmland. The farms had mostly dairy herds with a few sheep. As we approached the forests of the mountain range we came to the Kauri Museum. It is a very well done museum depicting a history of the logging industry in NZ. Kauri are the NZ equivalent of the Redwoods of the Northwest. While they rarely reach a height above 120 feet they have a large body of virtually the same diameter up to the last 15-20 feet. The Kauri giants were cut for ship construction in the late 1800's. The museum had displays of the huge boards that these logs produced and some of the things they were used for. One particularly interesting item was a large butter churn drum - large enough to produce 100 packets of 56 pounds of butter each; almost 3 tons of butter. This was used at a time when all the cows were milked by hand.
A very interesting display was of large boards taken from logs of trees that had been found buried in swamps in the area. Trees have been found at three different levels in the top 24 meters of this swamp, and these trees have been dated from 2000 back to 40,000 years old. The boards look as if they came from a newly cut tree. Kauri has lots of gum (pitch) in the wood and is highly rot resistant. A NZ history lesson is being ignored. At least three times in the last 40,000 years forests of these giant trees have grown and then destroyed by geologic forces. With all the steam vents, geysers, and mud pools in the area it is still geologically active and not a place to be developing for increasing numbers of residents.
We continued West and up and over the mountain range on one of the steepest and most crooked roads we've driven. Just over the top of the mountain range stands the largest Kauri tree in NZ. Too large to photograph with my lens, I made 4 overlapping photos and merged them into a single photo of the tree. The software seemed to work pretty well. First time I had tried a vertical merge. On the remainder of our trip up the West Coast and around the upper end of Northland to Paihia we saw several flocks of wild turkey in the fields. Paihia is a very scenic town on the Bay of Islands. It's primary orientation is tourist facilities: hotels, backpacker facilities, cafe's, etc.
