☰Gumdiggers Park

Gumdiggers Park is an authentic kauri gum-digging site preserved much as it was in the late 19th century, when Croatian immigrants worked these swampy paddocks extracting fossilised kauri resin. You walk around the open diggings, peer into the pits, and see ancient kauri logs unearthed from deep in the ground — some buried for over 45,000 years. It is a quiet, unhurried place, run by the same family for decades, and the guided element adds real context. Located on Heath Road near Awanui, about 12 km north of Kaitaia on the road to Cape Rēinga.