Kauri gum a very rare find

Four-year-old Georgie Hill thought she had “struck gold” when she found several pieces of Kauri gum in her Matakatia garden.

Once the clay was cleaned off, the translucent quality of the gum that Georgie had spotted was revealed and more pieces were later dug from the garden.

Georgie’s family has owned a section in the La Grande Vue subdivision since 2012 and are finishing the building of their home.

Her mother, Sarah, wonders whether earthworks to provide a flat house site brought the Kauri gum up from deep in the soil.

Kauri Museum collections manager Sherry O’Neill says this is likely to be the case.

She says the gum is getting more rare and is not commonly found in topsoil any more.

Areas of Matakatia, including part of the Scenic Reserve, were formerly Kauri Forest and are now classified as ‘gumland’ because of deposits of gum.

The gum is the fossilized sap of the Kauri tree, which oozed out of cracks and breaks in the trunk and dried.

 

Eventually it comes loose and falls to the ground where it can lie buried for thousands of years, hardening and forming a gem-like material with a rough surface.

Kauri gum is generally around 30 to 60 thousand years old but can be millions of years old.