ANZ North Shore Business Banking and Guardian Trust—2 April 2019

ANZ is New Zealand’s largest bank and provide their employees with a day annually to volunteer at a community service organization of their choice.  For several years many ANZ professionals have been spending their volunteer day helping out at CUE Haven

Guardian Trust is the corporate trust branch of Perpetual Guardian, one of New Zealand’s largest and oldest providers of estate planning and trust services. Perpetual Guardian recently instituted a novel programme in which staff work four day weeks and one day every quarter volunteer at a community project.

Today nine staff from the ANZ North Shore Business Banking group were joined by two staff from Guardian Trust to continue to improve the walking tracks at CUE Haven.  Most of the ANZ team had been out to CUE Haven before and it was great seeing old friends and welcoming new people.

The group arrived first thing in the morning and included Ashleigh, Elaine, Joanna, Keith, Kim, Nina,  Ray, Vicki and Zhenzhen from ANZ.   And Cale and Josh from Guardian Trust.

It had rained overnight and the forecast was for possible showers during the day, but the sun was shining by the time everyone arrived and the occasional showers didn’t bother us at all.

We spent some time catching up over morning tea and then Mahrukh gave an update on CUE Haven activities and future plans.  Thomas then gave a safety briefing and outlined the work planned for the day.

The plan for the day was to continue to work installing side boards and retaining walls on a long section of track.   We drove up to the track site and first went for a short walk along the track where Thomas pointed out the issues that needed work.

We broke the group into two teams.  One team worked at one end of the track and the other team worked a few metres away near the middle of the track.

It was a bit of a hike from the road to where we would be working and the first task was to bring down all the gear.

We then went to work.  The team working at the end of the track took on the challenge of repositioning some old steps.  The first task was to dig out the old steps.

They then had a look at the slope of the track and determined the best way to reposition the steps.

They dug the new steps and also widened the track before installing side retaining boards.

They then reinstalled the step.

And continued on, widening the track and installing side boards.

They worked so fast, they needed to bring down some additional timber!

And installed it along the sides of the track.

Some of the boards needed to be cut to size.

The side boards were secured with pegs and nailed in place.

The team made some major improvements in the track in just a few hours.

In the meantime, the other team worked in the middle of the track on a different set of challenges.  This section of the track is fairly level, but because of that, the exact layout of the track isn’t always clear and we want to make the path well defined to protect the surrounding vegetation. The solution is to install low sideboards to clearly mark the track and to hold in the gravel we will put down when the track is finished.

The team first needed to figure out the best routing for the track and then dig out channels where the side boards would sit.

The side boards were installed with pegs and nails.

Getting everything straight and lined up required a lot of teamwork.

Some of the boards needed to be cut to size.

The team carried on down the track, digging and installing additional boards.

And like the other team, they made so much progress we needed to bring down additional timber.

And after just a few hours, they finished off the section of track we’ve been working on all summer!

The teams finished up at about the same time and brought up all the gear and loaded it in the ute.  Once we were finished in the field, we took a leisurely walk back to the cottage.  They also unloaded the gear and put it away in the storeroom.

We enjoyed seeing the collegiality and teamwork. Everyone worked really hard and showed a lot of creativity and energy in coming up with solutions and in just a few hours they greatly improved the appearance and quality of the track.

Many thanks to Linda, the North Shore Business Banking Regional Administrator for making the arrangements for the day and continuing to champion CUE Haven at ANZ.

And thank you Josh for organizing Guardian Trust’s visit today.  We hope to see you and your colleagues again!

A BIG thank you to everyone who came out today!  We very much appreciate your hard work and amazing contribution to CUE Haven. We really enjoyed working with you all and we hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did and look forward to having you out again for another fun and productive volunteer day.

And we also look forward to having you out with your friends and family for a leisurely visit soon to explore more of your community native forest reserve.

THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!