YOUR INDUSTRY
This board table made from swamp kauri now stands in Zespri’s head office at Mount Maunganui. Photo by Jamie Troughton
Fascinating history of twin kauri taonga An ancient forest and the tumultuous events which felled it, together with decades of the highs and lows of New Zealand’s horticultural industry, are all ingrained in special taonga – two kauri tables; one in the Horticulture New Zealand boardroom and one in Zespri’s head office at Mount Maunganui. Elaine Fisher Measuring five metres in length, 2.3 metres in width and weighing between 400 to 500kgs, the tables were made from part of an ancient kauri tree, preserved for possibly thousands of years in Northland’s Waiharara Swamp near Kaitaia. In April 1981, Warwick Davies and John Gardner milled the nine-metre diameter log after excavating around it and continually pumping to keep water below milling level. Brad Davies, nephew of the late Warwick Davies, says when Warwick and John found the log, part of the top section was exposed and as a result, was rotten. From the sound wood Warwick eventually made two tables.
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The ORCHARDIST : JULY 2022
“John has told me that the tables are made from a cross section of the central point or thereabouts of the log. They milled from the top through the rotten section while the log was within the ground. “They needed to pump water as they progressed, then rolled the log out of the ground and milled back from the other side, with the tables being the remaining unmilled central section of the log.” What felled the trees is the subject of research and conjecture, with theories including massive tidal waves, cyclones or flooding. “John Gardner’s theory is, given the direction the logs lay, it was probably as a result of a tidal wave,” says Brad.
