Kiwi Property—29 September 2017

Our spring maintenance season got off to a great start as an enthusiastic team from Kiwi Property in Auckland brought ingenuity and hard work to some walking track remediation work.

Kiwi Property is the leading owner of shopping malls and office buildings in New Zealand and they have a strong commitment to social service and creating positive and innovative living and working environments.  The team arrived first thing in the morning and the Exceptional People included Alvina, Amber, Chris G., Chris G., Christie, Dylan-Jane, Jason, Kane, Louise, Michael, Sam, Tony, Trevor, Tronelle and Warwick.

We got acquainted over morning tea and Mahrukh gave an introduction and overview of the history of the CUE Haven project.  Thomas then gave a description of the work planned for the day and a safety briefing.

After wet winter weather, the walking tracks at CUE Haven need a lot of maintenance work.  Heavy winter rains also show us where drainage or track structure need to be improved.  There is one stretch of track near the wetlands that runs along a steep slope.  As a result, the track had to be cut into the side of the slope and retained on both sides to prevent erosion.  There were a few small slips over the winter and we identified a number of areas where the track benching and retaining needed to be improved.  The plan for the day was to fix as many of those areas as possible and there were a lot of challenges because each track section presented a slightly different issue.

The Kiwi Property team broke into smaller teams and tackled different sections of the track.   The first task involved clearing the mud from the slips and making room for the new retaining boards.

It was great to see the team members working together to come up with innovative solutions to the track issues.  They took extra care to make sure everything was straight and even.

Once most of the digging was taken care of, new retaining boards were brought up, cut to shape and fitted.

Securing the new boards required a lot of pounding and nailing.

One by one the track sections were fixed up!

The team were keen to fully finish off the improved track, so we went down to the driveway to get some gravel to spread on the track to keep the surface safe in wet weather.  Buckets were filled up and loaded on the ute and we drove as close to the track as possible.

The gravel was carried out to the track and poured out to be raked in.

The team took extra effort to clear out any weeds on the track before the metal was spread on.

When the entire area had been graveled and levelled, the team collected all the gear and took a minute to admire their hard work and took a short walk on the improved track.

In just a few hours, the exceptional people had transformed the track section. Thanks to all their hard work it now looks much better and is safer and more comfortable to walk on.  A fantastic effort and everyone should be really proud of their work.

We then broke for a relaxing lunch and later went for a drive up to the top of the property to see where the viewing platform will be built next year.

The team then took a leisurely walk down to explore more of the property.

They checked out the weta hotels built by the students from Westlake Girls High School.

And even took a well-deserved rest on the fan tail bench.

We really enjoyed working with the exceptional people from Kiwi Property.  They were enthusiastic and fun and accomplished an amazing amount of work.

Our many thanks to everyone in the hard working team.  And a special thank you to Amber for arranging the visit and help with organizing the very productive day.

We hope you all enjoyed the day as much as we did and we are truly grateful for the contribution you have made to the CUE Haven nature reserve.  The track improvements you have made will be enjoyed by many visitors over the coming year and we look forward to having you back soon with your friends and family for a more relaxed visit.

THANKS!!