Industrious Kiwis
Kauri forest
Heaphy, Charles (1820-1881), Kauri forest, Wairoa River, Kaipara, 1839, Watercolour painting, Drawings, Paintings & Prints, Alexander Turnbull Library, Reference: C-025-014
Kauri forest
The infancy of the timber industry of New Zealand first occurred with the recognition of the value of Kauri trees for ships’ spars by early European explorers. Consequently by the mid 1820s timber merchants, sawyers and shipbuilders were setting up shore stations throughout the northern region.
While native timbers are no longer exhaustively milled, the timber industry in New Zealand remains an important industry today. This painting by Charles Heaphy illustrates a group of sawyers moving a Kauri log at a timber camp near the Wairoa River, Kaipara, in 1839.
Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.
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