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Warkworth Museum is showcasing a small display of kauri gum at the Mahurangi East Library this month.
Kauri gum – the fossilised resin of the kauri tree – was once Auckland’s chief export, and the Mahurangi coastline was part of that story. In 1904, two men discovered a large deposit of gum on the low-tide flats at Snells Beach, extracting seven tons over three weeks before word spread and 40 more diggers rushed to join them.
By 1907, around 250 diggers were working the licensed reserve there. Even today, tiny honey coloured fragments can be found among the sand and shell at Snells Beach, remnants of forests that stood there when the sea was 120 metres lower, during the last ice age some 20,000 years ago.
