The pōhutukawa tree had spent a couple of quiet centuries with just the company of birds before the first humans set foot on the beach below. But if the arrival of the waka caused a flurry in its branches, this was nothing in comparison with the upheavals that followed the sighting of European whaling boats on the horizon half a millennium later.
Now nearly 900 years old and with a trunk measuring more than 12m in circumference, the ancient tree is the most venerable inhabitant of a
