Totara: Boat-building and repairs. Cultural and aesthetic significance.

1. BOAT-BUILDING AND REPAIRS WITH TOTARA.

2.THE HEART AND SOUL OF TOTARA.

By Ross MacRae, B.A., BSc. Managing Director, Heartland Timbers Westport. June 2020.

Before thinking about the commercial values of totara, I try to understand its cultural significance and the personality, spirit and philosophy imbued in it by our tangata whenua and colonial forebears. For Maori, Totara is not merely a physical resource but a personal and spiritual reality, a tree and wood imbued with the soul and personality of ancestors and their life experiences and voyages, if I understand it correctly. To us later settlers, these perceptions animate our appreciation of not just the totara as a timber but Totara as a life form, a personality and a form of consciousness. It connects us with and perpetuates the entire culture and traditions of our predecessors and cultural partners and enrich our understanding of all things in our shared country Aotearoa, and our rural heartland.

Heartland Timbers NZ with Windfall Timbers Westport was founded on my curiosity, respect and empathy for the traditions and spirit of the people and the land, with a desire to learn more through our work with this revered native timber. I have studied and worked with Totara and other native timbers for a lifetime, but am in debt for my slim knowledge to my predecessors and the writers whom I thank and acknowledge in this website – particularly earlier writers like Elsdon Best, N.C. Clifton (“NZ Timbers”1990), John Wardle (“Wardle’s Native Trees of NZ” NZFAA 2011), John Patterson (“Pacific Parables” 2014), the researches of Paul Quinlan and the Northland Totara Working Group But uniquely and especially, we are all indebted to Philip Simpson for his beautifully illustrated, monumental and ground-breaking work of comprehensive scholarship and art: “Totara A Natural and Cultural History” 2017 which has miraculously appeared at this time.

I remember and try to understand that Totara does not just remind us of original ancestors and founders of New Zealand; in a real sense they are it and it, the tree and the wood, is them. It is the waka, the journey. it is the ancestors of legend. It is the people and tribes of the waka. It is the timber of the waka, canoes and ships which they sailed back to Hawaiki, even if only a hollowed out trunk with roots still attached! It is the primary resource which enabled the building of this country. It is a tradition of craft and culture which it is our pleasure to help revive and nurture. It survives in remote parts of our country, our heartland.

And thanks to the power of the weather of the gods, it is no longer the timber of memories and history but truly a windfall gift to us for salvage and recycling, work and reconstruction, to this day. Native timbers gifted by cyclones and storms are a truly organic and environmentally positive resource, reducing the production of greenhouse gases through decomposition or fire, and requiring absolutely no toxic treatments or residues to achieve durability in all conditions. Without success to date, I have persistently challenged government restrictions on the salvage of windblown native timbers and the shocking wastage and abhorrent destruction of windblown native logs and timbers caused by current policies. Nevertheless whatever salvage we have achieved provides an opportunity to revive the crafts and work in Totara and other native timbers in a country which depends on empires of pine and other exotic timbers which blanket vaste tracts of land, acidify and degrade the soil and ecologies and require toxic treatments for all durable uses.

We have spent 3 years salvaging and collecting and sawmilling a farm-lot of windblown native timbers and in research and development rather than determining the exact commercial product lines. This is a fresh restart and we will largely leave that for the user to decide.

There is the art of Totara and the art in Totara, which these pictures and words try to express. The art in Totara informs the arts of Totara which has been practiced for countless generations; the art in Totara is the beauty of grain and colour, as in the photographs above, each telling stories and histories of growth; their the transformation by applied oils and resins; the smooth beauty of every chip and cut in such an even and compliant wood; the infinite features and art forms brought about by growth patterns due to branching, ancient damage by kaka, insects, humans and microbiota and the random effects of rain, storms and ground movements – which are recorded in its substance. The art of Totara is in all the artifacts, carvings, sculpture and pioneer work which survives for generations in the outdoors and forever, kept under cover. It can once again be a part of modern and old waka, artifacts and buildings, working with the finest and purest natural materials. For examples of the life and features in Totara, please see images in “Timber Samples” and “Totara Specifications” Pages.

The art of Totara for me is the joy of Totara. We offer this and a range of other organic, natural, durable native timbers for your enjoyment. Please tell us what you need.

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