Mate and his Kauri Shack (Dargaville) Traditional Cache
Mate and his Kauri Shack (Dargaville)
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Hidden within the grounds of the Dargaville Info Centre you will find an abundance of Kauri...
When you find Kauri, what do you find... Kauri gum.
When you find a Kauri Gum, what do you find?... Gumdiggers!
This Old Timers name is Mate (pronounced matey).
Kauri gum is a resin produced by New Zealand giant Kauri trees. The resin helps protect the tree by filling in holes of damaged areas. Kauri trees can live for more than 1000 years, so they make a lot of gum over a lifetime. As the trees die and fall, the ground where they grew becomes littered with Kauri gum period over time, this gets covered by soil or swamps.
In the 19th and early 20th century, Mate headed for the gum Fields of Northland, hoping to find gum and sell it. He dug it out of the ground and found it in swamps. Many of these areas were scrublands covered in Manuka.
The tools he used were a spear to find gum and a specially designed spade to dig it up, of which he was very protective.
Gum digging was hard work, and it was difficult to make enough money. Along with other Digger's he lived in a rough Hut.
Working 6 days a week, and spent the evening cleaning the gum by scraping it with a knife.
Some also made ornaments by melting or carving the gum.
In the 1890's, it was getting harder to find Gum in the ground. Some people started climbing living Kauri trees to get gum but this often ended up killing the tree. Kauri gum industry continued into the 20th century. The price of Kauri Gum fell, and by the 1940s the gum industry was coming to an end.
In the 1890 some 20000 people were involved in the industry 7000 of them working full time.
Most gumdiggers were male, but in some places the woman and children - especially Maori also dug for gum.
Many diggers were single men who lived 2 or 3 to a hut, so Mate he found himself a nice spot far from the other diggers...
Where he thinks he has found a reasonable hoard!
Why don't you have a look around and check out his shack?
(Temporary cache in place currently.)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vs vg jrera'g sbe ln THZ.... Jurer jbhyq ln or?
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures