What is the oldest tree in Waipoua Forest?
The oldest tree in Waipoua Forest is Te Matua Ngahere, which the Department of Conservation estimates at over 2,000 years, ahead of its more famous neighbour Tāne Mahuta at somewhere between 1,250 and 2,500. Neither number is measured: coring a living kauri is not an option, so every figure here is an estimate, and the published spread for Te Matua Ngahere alone runs from 1,200 to 4,000 years. They are different trees to stand in front of. Tāne Mahuta is the size claim, 45.2 metres tall and 15.44 metres round by Dr Robert Van Pelt's 2002 measurement, the largest living kauri known, reached by a 166 metre boardwalk. Te Matua Ngahere is shorter at 29.9 metres and thicker at 16.41 metres round, a barrel of a trunk at the end of a 730 metre walk from a different car park four kilometres down the road. A third named group, the Four Sisters, leaves that same car park and is currently closed. Kauri dieback is a soil-borne disease with no cure, it has been found in this forest, and closing tracks is one of the few things that slows it. It is also why both open walks have wash stations at the entrance and decking the whole way to the tree.
Both walks leave State Highway 12 and both are free. The Tāne Mahuta boardwalk is 166 metres, about five minutes each way, flat and usable with a wheelchair or a buggy, open 9am to 3pm. Te Matua Ngahere is 730 metres and around twenty minutes each way from the Kauri Walks car park, open 9am to 4pm, ending at a platform about ten metres from the trunk. The two car parks are four kilometres apart, so you drive between them, roughly three minutes, rather than walking through the forest. Clean your shoes at the station at each entrance and stay on the boardwalk the whole way. Kauri roots run wide and shallow just under the leaf litter, and dieback spreads in the soil on footwear. The Four Sisters walk from the Kauri Walks car park is closed for the same reason. The Tāne Mahuta track reopened in December 2024 with a new boardwalk, bridge and platform, blessed at dawn by Te Roroa, the tree's guardians. There is no public transport out here: the forest is reached by car, about an hour north of Dargaville.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.