Bank of New Zealand Business and Commercial Banking Partners – West Auckland—10 November 2022

BNZ is one of New Zealand’s largest banks and they have a strong commitment to community service.  Teams from BNZ have been volunteering at CUE Haven for many years and today we had a fun and productive day with a hard working team of the West Auckland Business and Commercial Partners.

The team arrived first thing in the morning and included Elaine, Elizabeth, Fion, Greg, Jamie, Jason, Lallie, Liddy, Pravin, Siobhan, Tau and Tim.

Most of the group was new to CUE Haven, so Mahrukh spent some time explaining the history and philosophy of CUE Haven and gave a description of the project and plans for the future.

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

The primary plan for the day was to continue to work on upgrading a section of walking track.

Because of the size of the group, we drove up to the work site in two separate trips.  While the first group was heading up, the second group took the initiative to do some weeding by the cottage.

Once everyone was on site, we went to work. The plan was to work on a long section of track and the group initially broke into three teams. 

One team went with Thomas to check out a drain that had blocked and caused a small washout on a nearby section of track. They studied the situation and found that the existing drain pipes had been blocked.  They cleared the pipes and dug out a bigger sump—problem solved!

They then joined the other two teams working on improving the track section.  The plan was to widen and level the track and also install side boards to mark the track and make it easier to maintain.  The challenge was that this track has originally been built through a sloping section so one side was quite a bit higher than the other.  In order to properly install the boards, channels needed to be dug out along both sides, so most of the work involved lots of levelling and digging.

Work started where previous volunteer groups had left off.

They started out by planning the best approach to widening the track and used string lines and measurements to determine where to dig.

Once the channels were long enough, it was time to bring down the timber that would be the side walls.

The side boards were secured by pegs and nailed in place.  As they finished a section, they kept moving down the track digging more channels.

Curves in the track had to be measured and the boards cut to size.

Once the boards were secured, another task was to back fill the channel to keep the boards straight and level.

The teams continued moving down the track, extending the improved section.

The hard working team  used up all the timber and we had to go back to the shed to get more!

And the hard work continued after a well-deserved mid morning break.

The tracked was levelled and made smooth.

Because of their great teamwork and lots of energy, the team finished off the entire section of track we had planned for the day, making it to the junction with the Taraire track.

For the last task, the team spread some gravel on the completed track sections.  We cover all of the tracks with a layer of gravel to make them easier to use in all weather.

We loaded up lots of buckets.

We then drove as close to the site as we could and from there, the buckets were carried to the track where they were dumped and the gravel raked in.

By lunchtime the teams had upgraded and totally transformed about 30 metres of track.  The transformation is amazing!

Before:

After:

The team accomplished a huge amount of work, exceeding our expectations for the day.  They made major improvements to the track and should be extremely proud of their efforts. 

Once we were finished, the team brought down all the gear, cleaned up and had a relaxing lunch.

As always, we really enjoyed working with everyone.  It’s great seeing the collegiality and teamwork amongst the group. Everyone worked really hard and showed a lot of creativity and energy in coming up with solutions to the interesting track challenges they tackled.

Many thanks to Jamie for organising the volunteer team and continuing to champion CUE Haven at BNZ.

A BIG thank you to everyone who came out today!  We very much appreciate your hard work and amazing contribution to CUE Haven. 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!!