Administered by the Department of Conservation, The Kauaeranga Forest Park is an ideal playground for hikers, mountain bikers and, of course. us Naturists.  The rugged hills, which include Table Mountain (846 metres) and the Pinnacles (759 metres), provide a spectacular backdrop.  Clear streams run through the valleys and at Sleeping Gods Canyon there's a magnificent 300-metre waterfall.

The Kauaeranga River was once named Waiwhakauaeranga, which means "waters of the stacked-up jaw bones". Historians from the Ngati Maru Maori tribe claim the name originated from a famous battle - members of Ngati Maru stacked up the jaw bones of their defeated enemies in rows on the banks of the river.

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The Kauaeranga Valley was once filled with magnificent Kauri trees. From the 1870s to the 1920s, this area was extensively logged for its Kauri.  At first the easier slopes near Thames were logged and the kauri milled locally. During the 1890s the kauri timber industry slumped and many local mills closed down. Around 1910 the industry revived and plans were made to extract the remaining stands of timber in the rugged area above Kauaeranga Gorge - the area now traversed by the Kauri Trail. In the main river valley and its tributaries, contractors worked from bush camps supplied by packhorse track. Using axe, saw and timber jack, they felled thousands of massive trees, which were trimmed, cut to length and transported to streams, and rivers via log chutes or along skidded roads. Dams were built in the valley and often tripped in sequence to send timber down the river. One such dam is the Tarawaere dam, a rafter-type dam built in the 1920s by Jim Angle.  Now almost unrecogniseable, the dam spanned the Tarawaere Stream 24.5 meters across and 8 meters high at the waterline when full.