Gum-diggers were men and women who dug for kauri gum in the old kauri fields of New Zealand at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The term may be a source for the nickname "Digger" given to New Zealand soldiers in World War I. [16] In 1898, a gum-digger described "the life of a gum-digger" as "wretched, and one of the last ...

Gum digging was dirty, muddy work, and diggers working in swamps typically wore long rubber boots. New Zealanders call these gumboots – not because the boots were used on the gumfields, but because they were made from gum or rubber.

Discover GumDiggers Park - an authentic Kauri gum-digging site and buried Kauri forest attraction located north of Kaitaia New Zealand.

Dalmatians, Māori and British worked as diggers. They used a spear to find gum and a specially designed spade to dig it up. Gum digging was hard work, and it was difficult to make enough money. Diggers lived in rough huts. They worked six days a week, and spent their evenings cleaning the gum by scraping it with a knife.

Kauri Gum is the fossilised resin or sap of the Kauri Tree. The age of the gum can vary significantly – anywhere from a few hundred years old to many hundreds of thousands of years old. Some Kauri Gum found in the Otago in the South Island has been estimated by scientists to be over 175 million years old and is actually Amber.

Stories tell of yields of two hundredweight of crutch gum from one tree, and of massive subterranean deposits of over 600lbs in a single nugget. A lone gumdigger scrapes the oxidised rind from the gum he has collected by resting the lump on a …

Gumboots, Gumfields & the Gumdiggers. This Gumfield is a genuine authentic gumfield in which all the gum holes were dug by hand. The gum holes range in size from one metre to several metres deep.

From 1870 to 1920, digging gum was a major source of income for Māori and settlers in Northland. In the 1890s some 20,000 people were involved in the gum industry – 7,000 of them working full time...

Jan 12, 2016 · Gumdiggers Park is an authentic piece of New Zealand history. Home to the oldest non-fossilized wood found on earth, the buried ancient Kauri trees are something to see. Developed only enough to make it safe for visitors, Gumdiggers Park is …

Gum digging was dirty, muddy work, and diggers working in swamps typically wore long rubber boots. New Zealanders call these gumboots – not because the boots were used on the gumfields, but because they were made from gum or rubber.