A giant in the making

Today my morning run produced good photos of kawaupaka (the small shag), toreapango (variable oystercatcher), and tarapunga (red-billed gull) in flight, having just tried to chase me off the beach. But all have been left by this photo from the deck at the restaurant where we took jesafly and tsuken and his family to lunch.

This is the top of a young kauri tree (Agathis australis) downhill from the restaurant. The dark free globular cones can be seen, and the leaves are those of an adult tree, even if a young one. This one still had the conical shape of a ricker. I have copied below some information from an official Government site.

Kauri are among the world's mightiest trees. They can be more than 50 metres tall, with trunk girths up to 16 metres, and living for more than 2000 years. Kauri forests once covered 1.2 million hectares from the Far North of Northland to Te Kauri, near Kawhia and were common when Maori first arrived around 1000 years ago.
Maori used kauri timber for boat building, carving and building houses. The gum was used as a fire starter and for chewing (after it had been soaked in water and mixed with the milk of the puha plant).
The arrival of European settlers in the 1700s-1800s saw the decimation of these magnificent forests. Sailors quickly realised the trunks of young kauri were ideal for ships' masts and spars, and the settlers who followed felled the mature trees to yielded huge quantities of sawn timber of unsurpassed quality for building.
The gum too, became essential in the manufacture of varnishes and other resin-based products. The gum was obtained through digging, fossicking in treetops, or more drastically, by bleeding live trees.
More forest was cleared as demand for farmland and timber increased in the early and mid 20th century. A desire to preserve the natural habitat of kauri led to moves to put all the substantial scattered remnants of kauri forest into a single national park. In 1952 the 9105 hectare Waipoua Sanctuary was finally declared, with all remaining kauri forests in Crown lands coming under the protection of the Department of Conservation by 1987. Kauri trees on private land are now also largely protected.
Waipoua is home to Tane Mahuta, king of the forest and the largest remaining kauri tree in the country. The 1500 year old Tane Mahuta is 51.5 metres tall, with a girth of 13.77 metres. The second and third largest kauri trees can also be found in the Waipoua Forest: Te Matua Ngahere and the McGregor Kauri.
The forests of Waipoua are vitally important refuges for threatened wildlife. The endangered North Island kokako and the North Island brown kiwi both live here. More abundant are the kukupa/kereru ( New Zealand wood pigeon), fantail, pied tit, tui, grey warbler, shining cuckoo and kingfisher. Another distinctive creature is the large and very handsome kauri snail, a carnivore which feeds mainly on earthworms, slugs and soft-bodied insects.

I have only once been to Waipoua to pay my respects to Tane Mahuta. He is awe inspiring in his majesty and is variously estimated to be 1,500 to 2,500 years old.