The biggest kauri on New Zealand's east coast stands beside a museum car park in Warkworth. That is the claim the Warkworth museum makes for it, and the local tourism office and the trail guides repeat it: a trunk more than seven metres round, measured at 7.62, on a tree about 38 metres tall and roughly 800 years old. "Probably the largest", one of them adds, which is the honest way to hold a title nobody has formally settled. It is still here because of a fundraiser. The park is the old property of the Reverend McKinney, later the Simpson family's, and the two giants at its entrance carry those two names. About fifty years ago the Warkworth Kauri Bushmen's Association raised money for one purpose, to save these two trees, and gave the land to the council once it was secured. Everything around them is what that fundraising bought. Today the McKinney Kauri rises straight out of mown grass, a single clean trunk with a fence around its base and its crown still full and healthy. A boardwalk loop runs on into the bush behind it, 20 to 35 minutes if you walk the whole thing, and part of it takes a wheelchair. Two requests come with the visit, and both are for the tree. Scrub your shoes at the cleaning station on the way in, because kauri dieback travels in soil. And stay on the boards.
Parry Kauri Park, Tudor Collins Drive, Warkworth, Auckland, New Zealand (beside the Warkworth & District Museum) You can recognise it by the girth, more than seven metres round, the thicker of the two kauri at the park entrance, standing alone in mown grass with a fence around its base. It stands beside the Warkworth Museum car park.
Free. Auckland Council public park with a boardwalk loop (about 20-35 minutes, partly wheelchair accessible), reached from a free car park at the Warkworth & District Museum on Tudor Collins Drive. Car park open 7am-9pm in summer, 7am-7pm in winter. Kauri dieback cleaning stations at the entrance; visitors asked to stay on the boardwalk.
In Warkworth town centre, adjoining the museum; a short walk from central Warkworth. No public transport check done; reached easily by car off SH1, about an hour north of Auckland.