Air New Zealand—8 December 2020

Air New Zealand Greenteam members have been volunteering  at CUE Haven for years and we were very happy when the staff of the procurement department offered to spend a day helping us with some track maintenance work.

The group arrived first thing in the morning and included Aaron, Alistair, Amelia, Andrea, Bel, Chris, Drew, Dylan, Eddie, Gary, Jonny, Kamla, Meredith, Meriem, Mila, Nick, Noel, Paul, Rafael, Saraj, Stephen, Suman and Tim.

Since everyone was 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.

A lot of the track maintenance work this year was deferred due to the Covid lockdowns and 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 earlier.

It was a short walk out to the area where we would be working.

Once on-site, Thomas explained the tools we would be using and the work to be done and we 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 team to finish off two long sections of track.  While most of the group worked in the field, two people stayed back and did some weeding around the cottage and in the wetlands.

Once the trimming was finished, the team helped with putting a layer of gravel on a section of track we have been improving.  We filled buckets with 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.

It was a long walk from the road to the end of the track!

And the empty buckets were brought back for a refill.

To speed things up, some people carried more than their share!

It was hard work and it didn’t help that it was one of the hottest days of the season, but the enthusiastic and hard working group accomplished a lot and the track is looking better than ever—thank you so much!

Our many thanks to Alistair for organising the day.

And a BIG THANK YOU to the entire team for all of your hard work.  We really enjoyed meeting you all and spending time with you and we hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did.  We so appreciate all your hard work and efforts and enthusiasm.  It was a lot of hard work but you 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 hope you all have a great holiday season 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. And bac again next year for another fun and productive volunteer day.

Thank You!! Thank You!!