Westlake Boys High School—4 December 2020

Westlake Boys High School on Auckland’s North Shore is one of New Zealand’s largest schools for boys.  It has a strong focus on academic success and a culture of achievement and service.

As part of their end of term activities, the Year 9 and 10 students are given the opportunity to be involved in a variety of activities and we were very happy that the students chose CUE Haven for their activity day and spent the day helping us with a variety of tasks.

The group arrived at ten and included teachers Amy Bennett and Kelly Easton and students Ben, Chanwook, Dylan, Ethan, Kevin, Krish, Lachlan, Leo H., Leo L. and Madoc.  Also joining us was our young volunteer David who came along to help for the day.

Since all of the students were new to CUE Haven, Mahrukh took some time to give them an orientation on the history of the CUE Haven project, our philosophy and plans for the future.

Thomas then gave a safety briefing and a description of the work planned for the day.

This time of year, our highest priority is walking track maintenance work – this includes trimming back overhanging vegetation along the track and upgrading and fixing the actual tracks.  We asked the group to help us out with trimming some vegetation on a long track section and then putting some gravel on a section of track that had been upgraded this spring.

We took a short walk out to the track and went to work.  The task involved cutting back vegetation to widen the track and improve its appearance.

They quickly moved down the track and made good progress.

It didn’t take long for the group to finish the entire track section.

Once the trimming was finished, we asked the group to put a layer of gravel on a section of track we have been improving.  The boys filled up buckets of gravel and Thomas drove them as close to the track site as possible.

Once onsite, the buckets were unloaded and carried down the track.

The gravel was emptied onto the track and raked smooth.

And the empty buckets were brought back for a refill.

It was hard work bringing down the two loads of gravel, but the enthusiastic and hard working group accomplished a lot and the track is looking better than ever—thanks!

While doing the gravelling work, the group had to cross a bridge where a section of the wire mesh installed to improve traction had worn away and they took on the task of cutting and installing a new section of mesh.

The first step was to cut way the damaged section.

They then cut a new piece of mesh and nailed it in place.

The result of all the hard work is a great improvement in the track—great job!

Our many thanks to Amy for once again organizing the day and continuing to champion CUE Haven at Westlake Boys High School and also helping out today. Also, many thanks to Kelly for coming along to help out.  We really appreciate your continuing support.

And a BIG THANK YOU to David and all the WBHS students. You all worked very hard and did a great job and made a very valuable contribution to CUE Haven.  Thanks to your efforts, visitors to CUE Haven will now have a comfortable walk along the tracks.

We enjoyed meeting and working with you and we hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did. We wish you all the best with your studies and we look forward to having you all back again soon with your family and friends to explore more of CUE Haven – your community native forest reserve.

Thank You!! Thank You!!