Scavenger Hunts and Live Mannequins at the Kauri Museum

The value of the kauri tree

This initial tour with Mary helps us understand why kauri was such a sought-after tree. Various displays to pick up and feel the kauri allow us to see how flexible the timber is, how durable it is underground, and how even its gum can be used for flooring, for example. Once the value of its gum was discovered, early European settlers in New Zealand would go to some wacky tree-climbing lengths to extract it from the tree, which is showcased in with a couple of mannequins wearing crampon-like boots and ropes to climb these trees as if they were climbing some treacherous ice wall! Like with anything exploited though, this damaged the tree until it died.

The next room oozes with the sorrow of the loss of kauri forest that once covered most of the Northland region. A cut-away of a kauri log that has been struck by lightening shows the size of an 800-year-old tree, while black rings painted on the wall show the size of the largest-known trees, almost three times the size of today’s largest, Tane Mahuta.

A scavenger hunt with a live mannequin

As the tour with Mary comes to an end, we see a woman walking down the stairs dressed in some fabulous attire from the days of old. What we chose to believe is that one of the mannequins has come to life and is going to take us on a “scavenger hunt” (working title), where we are armed with a clipboard full of questions which we need to answer by exploring the museum. Some answers can be found by reading the short panels of information, while others are just general New Zealand knowledge. (Travelling around New Zealand non-stop for an entire year should give us an upper-hand, right?)

Polishing our own piece of the Kauri Museum

Polishing our own pieces of kauri gum

Most of the questions are about the people who lived in New Zealand during the Kauri industry days, which takes us on tiki tour around the various mannequin scenes set up around the museum, from the families to the gum diggers. It also takes us downstairs to The Gum Room where we find a couple polishing kauri gum in the midst of display cases gleaming with golden gum. Here, we become gum polishers ourselves just to experience how long it takes to bring out the shine, along with the smell and texture. We also learn how kauri gum was so prized that it was used for trading, kind of like its own currency. With that, we take our kauri gum with us, as we might need it later. Plus, Robin can make Laura a nice necklace out of it.

From moving mechanisms to moving mannequins

Our scavenger hunt now takes us into the timber mill with actual moving mechanisms to demonstrate how the machinery worked. We also visit scenes of a few of the other growing industries of the time, like farming. Then wander into a large kauri house built inside the museum! Here, we get snapshots of home life for the early settlers. There’s even a woman taking a bath and… Wait, is her toe moving? We keep an eye on the mannequin whose head suddenly moves.

“It’s a robot!” Laura exclaims. Even when she sees the lady walking around later, she is still convinced that New Zealand’s artificial intelligence is superior.