New Zealand - Life on the Kauri Gumfields - Gum sorters at work - 1909 - Unknown Photographer - Original Newspaper Clipping, published in The New Zealand Christmas Graphic #330948 Kauri gum - Kauri gum is a fossilised resin extracted from kauri trees (Agathis australis), which is made into crafts such as jewellery. - Kauri forests once covered much of the North Island of New Zealand, before Māori and European settlers caused deforestation, causing several areas to revert to sand dunes, scrubs, and swamps. - Even afterward, ancient kauri fields continued to provide a source for the gum and the remaining forests. - Kauri gum formed when resin from kauri trees leaked out through fractures or cracks in the bark, hardening with the exposure to air. - Lumps commonly fell to the ground and became covered with soil and forest litter, eventually fossilising. - Other lumps formed as branches forked or trees were damaged, which released the resin - Gum-diggers were men and women who dug for kauri gum, a fossilised resin, in the old kauri fields of New Zealand at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. - The gum was used mainly for varnish. - The term may be a source for the nickname "Digger" given to New Zealand soldiers in World War I. - In 1898, a gum-digger described "the life of a gum-digger" as "wretched, and one of the last occupations a man would take to. (source - Wikipedia)