ANZ—5 April 2016

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.  Over the years there have been several teams of ANZ staff at CUE Haven to help us out.

Today a group of seven professionals from the Direct Business Banking department joined us for some late summer track work.

The group included Aatish, An, Anthony, David, Hilary, Peter and William.

We got acquainted over morning tea and gave the group an overview of the CUE Haven project as well as a safety briefing.

This summer we have been working on a new walking track.  It is largely complete, but there were a few spots that needed to be finished off.  We drove up to the work site and the group went to work, straightening and levelling some of the steps and boxing in others that would be prone to erosion.

The first task involved checking the steps and levelling them as necessary.  This required a lot of measuring and digging.

Some of the steps on sloping ground had to be boxed up to prevent slips and erosion.  This involved cutting the timber planks to size and installing them.

The end result is a great set of safe and good looking steps for visitors to walk on.

The team then moved down to an older section of track in the bush.  At this point in the track, there is a sharp bend at the bottom of a set of steps.  There has been a lot of erosion along the curve as visitors have walked down the steps and around the corner.

The team built a small retaining wall around the corner to protect it from further erosion and also levelled the path to make it easier and safer to walk on.

The project involved digging out the eroded sections, measuring and cutting timber and installing the planks.

The new retaining wall makes the track a lot safer and easier to negotiate.

We then took a walk back to the cottage for a relaxing lunch.

It was a great day and the team got a lot of work accomplished in just a few hours.

A big thank you to Aatish for organising the visit today. Aatish had been out last winter with a community youth group and had assisted with planting trees and it was wonderful to have him bring his ANZ colleagues out this year.

And our many thanks to everyone in the hard working team. It was great meeting you all and we very much enjoyed spending time with you. Thanks to all your hard work today the track network at CUE Haven is safer and better looking than ever.  We really appreciate your efforts.

We look forward to having you back at CUE Haven for a more relaxing visit sometime soon.

Thanks again!