chapter18

Chapter Eighteen

“You left school when you were big enough to carry a kerosene tin of water in each hand,” said Uncle Trev. “My first job was leading a string of pack-horses loaded with tucker for the kauri bush camps up the back of Mercury Bay.”

“Remember you told me about a kauri that was so tall, you could see the South Pole from its top? I gave a morning talk at school, and Mr Jones laughed and said it made a good yarn.”

Uncle Trev nodded. “There was another kauri up in the head of Mill Creek, so tall I get a crick in my neck just thinking about it.”

“Crikey.”

“The trunk was so thick through we had to lash two cross-cut saws together to cut it down. Half a dozen men each side tallied on to ropes tied to the handles. One team ran with the rope over their shoulders, pulling the saw through the cut. Then they had to run backwards while the other team ran and pulled the saw the other way.

“Instead of tramping all the way back to camp, we slept inside the scarf, the notch you cut out on the side you want the tree to fall. And you know we never felt a drop of rain in there.”

“What if it came down in the night and squashed you?”

“No show of that. That kauri was so thick, it took all of eighteen months to saw through, and when we finished, it sat on its stump and wouldn’t fall. We drove steel wedges into the back-cut, but it squeezed them out like orange pips. One of my mates got hit by a flying wedge and he still limps.

“The bush boss said he was losing money on the big kauri. He told us to leave it alone, and the wind would blow it over.”

“And did it?”

“We had a storm, and the wind was so strong it blew our tent away, with a new chum hanging on to a rope. The last we saw of him, he was sailing over the top of the Coromandel Range.”

“What happened to him?”

“The tent came down on Waiheke Island. I believe he still lives there.”

“In the tent?”

“I believe so.”

“Did the wind blow down the big kauri?”

“It just stood on its stump and started growing again,” said Uncle Trev. “That tree was so big, it grew that fast you could hear the sap wood joining together, closing over the saw-cut till it looked like a thick belt around the trunk.”

“Is it still up Mill Creek?”

Uncle Trev shook his head. “The contractor sacked the bush boss and reckoned he’d see we cut it down properly. But that old kauri, he’d grown so much bigger we had to chop the scarf twice as big and tie three cross-cuts end to end. It came down this time, but it was so tall now, the top of the tree didn’t hit the ground till a couple of days after it started falling, and then it came down with such an almighty thump, it buried itself in the ground. Took eighteen men seven months using thirty-six horses and scoops to dig it clear.

“We sniped the butt end and pulled the log down the gully with sixteen teams of bullocks, eighty in each team. One hundred men using timber jacks worked it down the rolling road into the creek. It took all the water from six dams to drive it down to the Mercury Bay River, and the huge log floated downstream with all those one hundred men standing on it, arms stretched out so only their fingers touched – that’ll tell you how long it was. There wasn’t a camera in New Zealand big enough to take its photograph.”

“What’d they do?”

“The photographer took twenty snaps as it floated past, and glued them side by side. He said the camera was never good for anything again.”

“Why not?”

“He’d strained the lens, trying to photograph that enormous kauri.

“We chained the log to Whitianga Rock down in the Bay. There was nobody in the mill with arms long enough to pitsaw it, and the breaking-down saws weren’t built that could handle it. Then one night with a big tide the log tugged on its chains till it shifted Whitianga Rock several feet to the north. You can still see the flat bit at the bottom where it was moved off its base.

“People said what if the huge log towed Whitianga Rock out to sea? Besides, it displaced so much water, the tide rose several feet above its normal level, and water came right up to the pub door. Things were looking really serious. Then old Dugald Bryce had a brainwave. He rigged some kauri rickers along the top of the log as masts, sharpened the sniped end into a bow, and sailed it up to Auckland.

“He hollowed out the log at the foot of Queen Street. The timber out of the inside, he sold to the City Council, and they used it to build the old wooden harbour bridge to Devonport.”

“I didn’t know they had a harbour bridge in Auckland,” I said to Uncle Trev.

“A German submarine torpedoed it in the Great War, and it caught fire and sank. You can still see the blackened stumps of the piles under the Devonport wharf.”

“What did Mr Bryce do with the hollowed-out log?”

“Towed it around to Rangitoto Island, stood it on end, built a circular staircase inside, and sold it to the Marine Department for a lighthouse. That’s the one you can see from Takapuna Beach.

“Of course,” said Uncle Trev, “it’s been painted so many times, people think it’s made out of concrete. But anyone with half an eye can tell it’s made out of a kauri tree.” He stopped and looked at me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” said Uncle Trev, “when he put the light on top, old Dugald Bryce carved the lens by hand out of a big lump of kauri gum. Most lighthouses have a white light, but you’ll notice the one on Rangitoto looks just a bit yellow – the effect of the light coming through the kauri gum.”

“I wonder if I’ll ever see it?”

“Your mother tells me Dr Stirrup says you’ll be going back to school any day now. When you’re fit enough to travel, how would you like to go up to Auckland on the Rotorua Express, catch the ferry across to the North Shore, take the steam tram to Takapuna, and have a look at the only lighthouse in the world built out of a kauri tree?”

“I’d like that!” I said. “How tall is the lighthouse?”

“Funny you should ask that,” said Uncle Trev. “Nobody ever measured it, because there wasn’t a tape measure long enough. And just last week, in the Auckland Herald, there was a letter to the editor from the lighthouse keeper saying he’d tried to count all the steps to the top of the staircase. He got up to two thousand, went giddy and lost count. Yet a few months ago, he counted the steps and there were only fifteen hundred. He reckons the kauri lighthouse has taken root there on Rangitoto and started growing again.

“Just to make matters worse, he said when he got to the top of the steps he dropped his box of matches. By the time he’d climbed all the way down for them, and climbed all the way up again, the sun was shining and there was no point in lighting the candle.” Uncle Trev tapped the side of his nose, winked, and was gone.

“When I go back to school, I’ll give them a morning talk about the Rangitoto lighthouse,” I said aloud to myself. “And I’ll tell Mum about it when she comes home.”