Overseas Chinese Association & ANZ Asian Business Banking—28 May 2017

Today our friends from the NZ Chapter of the Overseas Chinese Association and the ANZ Asian Business Banking group in Auckland teamed up for an amazing day of tree planting.

It was great seeing old friends and meeting new ones!

This is the third year that the wonderful members of the Overseas Chinese Association have helped us and planted trees at CUE Haven. The amiable ANZ group had come out earlier this summer to help with walking track work and volunteered to come again to help us plant trees.

The Overseas Chinese Association group members included Adonis, Ada, Allen, Amy, Anne, Annie, Benjamin, Chen Huei, Cheng Yu, Chia, Christina, Christine, Cindy, Elaine, Eric, Gary, Grace, Howard, Hsi Hao, I Jinn, Ifsen, Jo, Judy, Julia, Julia T., Kay, Lauren, Lawden, Leah, Linda H., Linda W., Pearl, Raymond, Rose, Ruby, Simon, Tao Wei, Vicky, Wei, William and baby Felicia.

And the ANZ group included Fiona, Jenny, Jiadi, Julia, Lily, Lin, Miki, Ray, Tina, William and young Max.

We started out with a leisurely morning tea to give everyone a chance to get acquainted.  We’d like to thank Nestle NZ for providing the variety of Nescafe menus coffees for our volunteers.

Mahrukh then gave the group an update on the latest developments at CUE Haven and Thomas did a safety briefing and description of the work planned for the day.   Some of our guests are not very proficient in English, and Wei Teng, a Mandarin language interpretation doctoral student, assisted with the briefings.

The group broke into teams of two and each team picked up a spade and took a short walk up to the planting site.

At the site, Thomas gave a planting demonstration and update of the safety briefing before the group went to work.

The plan for today was to plant long-lived canopy trees in amongst the pioneer trees that several members of the Overseas Chinese Association had planted during their first visit to CUE Haven in 2014.  Today’s planting included totara, rimu, lancewood, matai, miro, puriri and titoki.

The teams then went to work.  As this was infill planting, we had to spread out into the developing bush to find suitable spots amongst the growing pioneer trees to plant their trees.  The ground was steep and there was some heavy grass in some areas, but everyone coped very well.

At one point a shower came in from over the harbour.  But it didn’t last long and when the sun came out we got to enjoy a beautiful rainbow!

When all the canopy trees had been planted, the team collected all the empty pots and trays and equipment and brought them back to the nursery.

In just a couple of hours, the hard working group planted over 300 canopy trees!  A fantastic effort!!

Today the group celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival with a delicious lunch consisting of a special soup, salads and sticky rice dumplings.  While one group was in the field planting, Adonis and another team stayed back to prepare lunch.

They had brought all the equipment and ingredients and went to work.

Lunch was ready when the planting team got back and everyone relaxed and enjoyed the festive meal together.

At the end of the day, a team stayed behind to help us clean up! Thanks!

We had a fantastic day with everyone and we were very happy to have been able to meet up with old friends and make new friends.

A special thanks to Adonis Yang for all his help with organising the visit.  And many thanks to Lily Wang for coordinating the arrangements for the ANZ team today.

Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who came today. We very much appreciate your friendship, your enthusiasm and hard work and your continued support of our efforts at CUE Haven.

You have all made a major contribution not only to CUE Haven but also to our planet and the community.  The trees you planted today are a lasting legacy and will live for hundreds of years and provide a wonderful habitat for numerous plant and animal life and also create a wonderful native nature reserve for the whole community to enjoy for many generations.

Many Thanks again!!  We’re very much looking forward to having you visit again soon.