SECRETS OF THE SWAMP
In the carpark of Ngawha marae, in Northland, a massive kauri trunk lies in pieces, the whale-sized log next to its upright root ball. The ends are sealed with lacquer to keep moisture out, and its scalloped bark is slowly peeling off to land in curled flakes in the gravel. When I stand at the trunk’s cut face and stretch my arms out, I can’t reach all the way across. The wood is rough against my cheek, and I can smell the spicy, piney resin.
It feels and smells as if it could have been toppled a year ago. Yet when this tree last stood upright, Neanderthals and Denisovans still walked the Earth. Homo sapiens, still many millennia away from reaching New Zealand, had only recently colonised Europe and begun to make art.
In 2019, construction foreman Mark Magee was clearing a platform for a new geothermal power plant near Ngawha, using a 45-tonne digger, when it hit the obstinate, seemingly endless object 9m down. He called in more drivers to peel away the mudstone encasing it. Uncovered, complete with its Medusa-like rootball, it measured 25m long and 2.75m across and weighed 60 tonnes.
Although the kauri had clearly been buried for thousands of years, Magee was astonished to see recognisable leaves and cones stuck to its underside that were still green.
The power company Top Energy called in Dargaville sawmiller Nelson Parker to examine the find. As soon as his chainsaw bit into the bark, Parker knew from the
