01/10/2026
Gum Digging in Riverhead, Brigham’s Creek, Whenuapai & Hobsonville
Gum digging shaped early life in our district. Diggers came from everywhere - English, Scots, Irish, Scandinavians, Dalmatians, Pacific Islanders, women working alone, and families living in raupo huts.
Many later became the early settlers buried at the Hobsonville Church & Settlers’ Cemetery.
Māori had gathered kauri gum - kapia - for centuries. Its uses included fire‑kindlers, pigment binders, and chewing resin.
From the early 1840s, kauri gum was exported to London and America for fire‑kindlers, marine glue and, most importantly, varnish.
By the 1860s exporting kauri gum was an established industry, and Māori and European settlers set about digging gum from the ground.
From 1870 to 1920, gum digging became a major source of income for Māori and settlers in Northland.
From 1850–1900 kauri gum was Auckland’s biggest export - ahead of gold, wool and kauri timber.
Life on the gumfields was tough. Work was muddy and exhausting, and diggers in swampy ground wore long rubber boots - “gumboots,” are named not for gum digging, but because they were made from gum (rubber).
In 1876 two Norwegians, Neil Andersen and Petersen, worked with John Andersen, a Swede, at Brigham’s Creek. After John drowned at Brigham’s Creek, he was buried on the Lambs’ property - the same Lamb family who later acquired John Brigham's Waitematā Flour Mill at Riverhead, which became Riverhead Mills and eventually Auckland Roller Mills, Fort Street, Auckland City.
By the 1880s French, Italian and Dalmatian diggers were common. Dalmatians were among the most skilled, often sending money home and later becoming orchardists and winemakers in West Auckland.
Pacific Islanders also worked locally, including a dozen living in nikau thatched huts near Lucas Creek, and at least one Fijian, Joe Tol of Paremoremo.
Women dug gum too - Mrs Bradfield at Black Bridge, Liz Hatfield, Lizzie Fitzgerald, Annie Roach and Mrs Bell.
Many diggers lived in crude shelters or mud huts roofed with raupo. Fires were common, and some diggers died alone on the fields - one reason some early cemetery burials are marked “unknown.”
One well documented gum digger family was George and Annie Wallace, who lived at Puketui in a mud walled whare with a raupo roof, camp ovens, calico lined walls, goats for milk, and extensive gardens. Their children helped search for gum and sort it for sale.
George and Annie had five sons and three daughters - John, William, Walter, Mark (married Edith Wiseley), James, Ellen Jane (Mrs Alex Sinton), Mabel Violet (Mrs Charles Nicklin), and Agnes.
Later the Wallaces moved to Brigham’s Creek, then to the Riverhead paper mill, and finally to Hobsonville, next to Sinton Road - living in a house one paddock behind Constable John Roser’s home. The Roser villa, built by Alex Sinton, was later known as Indian Summer and then Villa Rose, the villa now relocated in 2020 to Puhoi.
The Hobsonville jail building was located next to our local constable’s house, so whenever he moved residence, the small building moved too. During a shift in 1910, the jail proved so heavy that six horses couldn’t budge it - and two more had to be brought in before it could be moved.
Gum digging was dangerous work. Deep pits collapsed, fires swept through huts, and roads were left hazardous. In 1886 and 1895 the Waitematā County Council received complaints about gum diggers encroaching on Brigham’s Creek Road and Riverhead’s public roads.
These diggers - soldiers, settlers, families and labourers - helped shape Riverhead, Brigham’s Creek, Whenuapai and Hobsonville. Their stories remain in our landscape, our old mill sites, and our cemetery.
Acknowledgements:
- ‘Riverhead, The Kaipara Gateway’ by Ian B Madden, President of the Auckland Historical Society for the Riverhead Jubilee Association Inc, 1966
- 'Up the River' Stories of the Settlers of Hobsonville, compiled by Laurel V. North (January 2000)
- Papers Past NZ
- teara.govt.nz/en/kauri-gum-and-gum-digging/
