Working the Kauri is the dramatic story of the bushmen of the great kauri forests in norther New Zealand.

Following its first use by Europeans in the late 1700s the kauri became the focus of an intensive timber industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based largely in Northland and on the Coromandel Peninsula. It was an industry which played a crucial role in the development of the country: kauri was one of New Zealand's first, and most important, exports, and was used extensively in the building of many of our early towns and cities.

At the heart of the industry were the kauri bushmen, a remarkable, colourful group of men who laboured deep in the forests, felling giant trees with simple hand tools. Using bullocks, tramways, steam winches and driving water the bushmen transported heavy logs across rugged country to the sawmills. It was tough, dangerous work that required the men to live for months in remote, rough camps.

This new book on the kauri timber era provides fascinating insights into the lives and works of the bushmen. Its text is illustrated with magnificent photographs drawn from the archives of the Matakohe Kauri Museum.