Seed Collection. Kauri. Agathis australis

[atree]

awesome pics man,would love to climb one of those,is the cone collecting for breeding due to the disease?

[Billy Goat Gruff]

Hi Drew,

Great shots, I have travelled in NZ lovely country.

Recently I read an article about Kauri trees that were thousands of years old, that were being lifted from farmers fields in NZ.

The trees fell into swamps/bogs, and because there was no oxygen, they were perfectly preserved, now they are being exhumed by an American company,(I think) and sold for vast amounts of money. Some of the trees weighed in at over 100 tons !!

[Billy Goat Gruff]

Oh, by the way the trees were thousands of years old, they hadn't recently fallen into Farmers fields, hope this makes sense.

[Mark T]

Just got back from cone/seed colection weekend. Big trees (but these are small compared with next weekend). Awesome time. Couple of 25m footlocks and SRT mixed in. Spent the night in the hennessy hammocks-they aer super comfy!! trees climbed were about 50m tall with huge canopy spread. Bush walking for couple of hours with 120m rope, full srt gear and dbrt gear was shattering-but worth it. got heaps of cool pics. location is kinda secret due to Kauri disease(type of phytophera). Really cool collecting the seeds for future seedlings

 

 

 

That all looks great mate... it's nice to get out and do stuff like that. I know what you mean about carrying long ropes. I'm part of the Tall Trees Project team over here in blighty, on the first trip we had 1 x 200m rope, 2 x 100m+ ropes plus all the other SRT & DRT gubbins (including the electric ascender - thanks Safety Technology!) to carry - glad we only had 400m max to lug it! You can see some more of our pics here... http://lwimages.ifp3.com/root/lwimages/iphoto/main2.cfm

 

Who were you collecting the seed for?

 

I'll PM you with a proposition...

[DrewB]

Oh, by the way the trees were thousands of years old, they hadn't recently fallen into Farmers fields, hope this makes sense.

 

some of its over 40000 yrs old-makes great wood for tuning, etc.... massive machines used to extract from the ground-the kauri museum (near the waipou forest) has great pics of it all if anyones ever near the area.

[DrewB]

That all looks great mate... it's nice to get out and do stuff like that. I know what you mean about carrying long ropes. I'm part of the Tall Trees Project team over here in blighty, on the first trip we had 1 x 200m rope, 2 x 100m+ ropes plus all the other SRT & DRT gubbins (including the electric ascender - thanks Safety Technology!) to carry - glad we only had 400m max to lug it! You can see some more of our pics here... http://lwimages.ifp3.com/root/lwimages/iphoto/main2.cfm

 

Who were you collecting the seed for?

 

I'll PM you with a proposition...

 

Seed collection was for Kauri2000. a plan to restore parts of new zealand bush back to kauri forest just like it was before cook landed here (i think)

got ya pm too

[DrewB]

Same species. different location. we were not allowed to take in-canopy photos, so here is some from the ground.awesome. Really was an honour to climb these trees.

[Mark T]

Seed collection was for Kauri2000. a plan to restore parts of new zealand bush back to kauri forest just like it was before cook landed here (i think)

got ya pm too

 

Sounds like another great trip for an extremely worthwile cause.

[sycamorephobic]

great job mate. grudgingly very envious. i got to climb a kauri the other week. alas it was only about 5 metres tall.

[nepia]

Same species. different location. we were not allowed to take in-canopy photos, so here is some from the ground.awesome. Really was an honour to climb these trees.

 

 

Gutted to see the sign about the delicate roots: I've got pics of me on honeymoon with the hired Honda Civic parked next to one of them on Highway ?12!