Tag: kahikatea

Yarndley’s Bush, Waikato

Walk #142, 6th December 2024

This small patch of bush near Te Awamutu is a tiny remnant of the Kahikatea forests that once covered the Waikato Basin. From the sign on the walk I read that today only 3.5% of the forests remain. There are 4922 forest fragments. A few are larger areas, but most are less than 25 hectares.

The only birds in the reserve are the more common tui, fantail and grey warbler.

The Kahikatea, more like a pine tree with its straight white trunk, was named “white pine.” It wasn’t any good for house timber, instead the wood was used for things like butter boxes.

Walk: Waikato 24

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Yarndley’s Bush, Te Awamutu

Lyndsay Bush, Waipukurau

Walk #94, 4th January 2023

Our first walk of 2023

This is a small bush reserve alongside the banks of the Tukituki River between Waipukurau and Waipawa. The bush is mainly comprised of kahikatea trees which love swampy ground.

The bush is not far from the area where my forefathers settled in Hawkes Bay. Sadly, ninety-nine percent of the bush was felled and milled. Growing up in Hawkes Bay I never saw or heard a Tui, or any of our native birds, until a visit to a bush reserve in 1970 when I was eleven.

Walk: Hawkes Bay 34

Just down the road from the bush reserve is the site of Kaitotoa Pa. The site used to be a food gathering place but it became a permanent settlement in the 1840s when the Maori traded harakeke (dressed flax) to the Europeans who used it for rope and ship rigging.