Kauri Museum

After visiting the Kauri forests, we went to Matakohe, home to the Kauri Museum. It was a little like Beamish near Durham in the UK, with a post office, school house and pioneer church with actors and interactive displays. A living, breathing, pioneer museum. It even had a full size boarding house, all the rooms complete with old furniture and mannequins to act out each scenario. The hairdresser, the banker, even the doctor and the dentist.

The museum is massive. Rooms filled with old Kauri trees, Kauri furniture and full displays showing how they cut down and then removed the trees from the surrounding forests.

You just can't believe how big these trees can grow until you see them for yourself. This wall shows the circumferences of the largest Kauri trees ever discovered in New Zealand.

And this section has been cut from a single length of tree trunk.

We even  got to sit inside one that had been hollowed to fashion a seat.

My favourite display was actually outside of the museum, what they call Swamp Kauri. Kauri trees and roots that have been preserved for thousand of years underground in swamps and bogs. They end up there after volcano eruptions or earthquakes.

They also had huge glass cases filled with Kauri Gum. New Zealand's version of Amber. It was a pretty good day out. It took us at least three hours to explore everything, and was a good way to get out of the rain.