July 24 Museum Day
We took a loop drive to visit 2 museums today. We started at The Dargaville Museum in Dargaville, the epicenter of the once booming Kauri Gum business.
The museum is on a hill above the town of Dargaville, on the bend of the huge Wairoa river.
The museum is chock full of tons of artifacts from all walks of life in the area. This inlaid card table made of kauri wood is one of the many beautiful pieces of furniture on display.
Outside there is a display of the shacks that immigrant labourers lived in while they worked the land, digging up kauri gum (clumps of hardened sap) from the vast kauri forests that once covered the land.
The second museum is The Kauri Museum, showcasing the kauri lumber industry that unfortunately cut itself out of business. The kauri tree grows so slowly it barely escaped extinction and only grows in small groves around the Northland now.
The ‘bushmen’ of NZ reminded me of the lumberjacks of Oregon and California that cut down the old growth Ponderosa and Redwoods.
A hollowed trunk shows how big the trees could get. This one would have been a teenager!
Collections of polished kauri gum are on display, including these, in which hapless animals were caught, probably thousands of years ago!
When we arrived back at Sam’s place, she had a delicious Roast Lamb and vegetable dinner for us!
Yummy!!