Tingey’s Kauri was a large, isolated tree in the Parahi-Okahu region of the Northern Wairoa. Sale gives dimensions of 14.02 m girth, 19.81 m to the first branches and a merchantable volume of 243.1 cubic metres – in these aspects, it was said to be identical in size to Tane Mahuta[1]. Sale even stated that the tree may have actually been larger (by timber content) given revisions in the assessment methods since the tree was measured.

Those suspiciously accurate dimensions were conversions from the imperial measurements of 65 feet to the first limb, and a girth of 46 feet, 6 inches. These same dimensions were given for a tree that grew near Tokatoka, some 13 km southwest of the Parahi-Okahu area, on the banks of the Wairoa river[2]. The same reference notes that a photograph of the tree, from the Dominion Museum in Wellington, was featured as the frontispiece of David Hutchin’s “Waipoua kauri forest : its demarcation and management”[3]. That photograph, by noted Auckland photographer Josiah Martin and reproduced here, shows a tree very similar to the one shown on page 193 of Sale’s book.

Like the neighbouring giants at Kaihu (NR/1375) and Ararua (NR/1513), Tingey’s Kauri was destroyed by fire around the start of the 20th century. The founder of Matakohe’s Kauri Museum, Mervyn Sterling acquired a piece of the stump of the tree afterwards, but it is not known if it is part of the museum’s current collection.

(Smillie, 2019)

[1] E. V. Sale, The Quest for the Kauri, Reed, 1978.
[2] W. R. McGregor, “GIANT KAURI TREE,” New Zealand Herald, 20 February 1932.
[3] D. E. Hutchins, Waipoua kauri forest : its demarcation and management, Wellington: Government Printer, 1918.