Whare Tarangu Meeting House

The proposal to build the Whare Runanga was put forward by northern Maori in 1932 in response to the gift of the Waitangi estate to the nation by Lord and Lady Bledisloe. A Maori House standing beside the european house would symbolise the words of Hobson in 1840. "He iwi tahi tatou. We are now one people".

Lord Bledisloe was invited to lay the foundation stone on Feb 6 1934. Some 10,000 people attended the occasion among them maori representatives from throughout the country.

Over the next six  years work on the house was carried out at Motatau under the direction of Tau Henare MP for Northern Maori. Timber was donated by Nga Puhi from their own lands. The principal carver was Pine Taiapa and the carvings represent the ancestral history of all tribal groups.

The Whare of Runange was officially opened on the centenery of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1940.

The wood used to build the house comes from the kauri trees, growing to more than 50 metres tall, with trunk girths of up to 16 metres and living for more than 2,000 years. The photograph is of a root of a kauri tree   at the  entrance to the hotel I stayed in the Bay of Islands.  The cars in the background give some indication of its size.

Kauri forests once covered 1.2 million hectares of the Northland and were common when the first people arrived around 1,000 years ago.  The maori used the 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 pukha plant).

The arrival of the european settlers in the 17-1800s saw the decimation of these magnificent forests. As I travelled further northwards from Whangerai  the Waipoua Forest is home to the largest Kauri tree known as Tane Mahuta, approximately 1200 years old and still growing.  Throughout the Northlands I was amazed at the size and true magnificence of these trees and there were many beautiful examples of how they had been used.

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/sights-activities/scenic-highlights/parks-reserves/scenic-highlight-details.cfm/businessid/63640.html
This site gives an interesting and  brief background  to  the forests.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-plants/kauri/