ANZ New Zealand—10 October 2014

ANZ New Zealand is one of New Zealand’s largest companies and one of its largest banks.  They have a strong commitment to corporate responsibility and community service and through their volunteering programme they encourage staff to volunteer their skills and time to community projects.  Today sixteen ANZ professionals from the Auckland CBD Commercial division visited CUE Haven to help out with some maintenance projects.

The group arrived first thing in the morning and included Andrew M, Andrew S, Bion, Charlotte, Dean, Harriet, Ian, Jasmin, Katherine, Laura, Logan, Maria, Paul, Phil G, Phil W and Simon.

This was the second year in a row that ANZ staff have come out to CUE Haven and it was great to see some old friends as well as some new faces.  We spent some time chatting over morning tea and Mahrukh then gave an overview of the CUE Haven project and Tom gave a safety briefing and overview of the work plan for the day.

The planting season is over, and spring means cleaning up after winter storms and rains. We split the group into two and one team went with Tom to work on some remedial work on the walking track.

And the other team stayed down with Mahrukh to do weeding and mulching in the orchard and around the cottage and car park.

The track team drove up to the start of the walking track and then walked down, clearing and fixing the track as needed.

The primary job was to clear away weeds that had grown over the track and the team used rakes and spades and hands to clear the vegetation.

There is a spot on the track that has never quite drained properly and is wet even in summer.  The team studied the problem and decided that a drainage ditch to a nearby pipe might be the solution.  They dug a big ditch along several metres of the track and it immediately started to show some improvement.

The next challenge the team tackled was an area of the track that went over an underground stream.  There were small, shallow tomo (sink holes) on either side of the track and although the track has been stable, we are concerned about the tomo getting larger in the future and destabilising the land bridge.

The solution the team came up with was to build a small wooden bridge to place over the land bridge.

While the rest of the team continued clearing vegetation, Bion and Simon went down to the nursery/workshop to construct the structure.

We brought it up to the site and the team dug out the area where the bridge would be installed.

Once it was fitted in place it was secured with stakes.

The last task the team handled was fixing up a drain pipe that had been blocked resulting in a small washout on the track.  They dug up the pipe, cleared it, dug a larger sump and re-installed the pipe.

In just a few hours the team gave the track an amazing makeover that will make the track safer and more enjoyable for visitors for years to come.  Thank you for all your hard work!

While the track team was busy, the team down by the house was working equally hard weeding and spreading mulch.   A few days ago Treescape NZ had generously supplied a truck load of mulch.

The first task for the team was to clear away some of the weeds that had grown up during the mild winter.

Once the worst of the weeds were out of the way, the team spread the mulch.

It was really hard working outdoors on a hot humid day but the team kept moving….

… till they had spread all 10 cubic metres of mulch!

The improvement is amazing and we can’t thank the team enough for their efforts.

Both groups finished up with the tasks shortly about 1 pm but we asked if anyone would like to help us install three signs along the walking track.  It wasn’t in the original work plan, but Andrew S, Bion, Katherine, Maria and Simon volunteered to help.

We spent an hour putting in the signs as it involved carrying bags of cement and cans of water along with tools and the signs deep into the bush.  It was hard work but the signs are a great addition to the CUE Haven landscape. Thanks very much.

We then broke for a relaxing and well deserved lunch.

We want to thank Nestle NZ for providing Nescafe Menu coffees and the very refreshing iced Nestea for the team to enjoy.  And thank you to Treescape for providing the mulch.

A special thank you to Bion for organising the day, and a huge thank you to everyone for all your hard work today.  We very much enjoyed working with you and getting to know you. You accomplished so much more than we had expected and we are truly grateful.

We hope you will come back for a more relaxed visit soon.

Thanks again!