The Sri Satya Sai Group is a spiritual organisation whose members make a commitment to community service The group have made many contributions to the CUE Haven restoration project over the years—assisting with planting, painting the nursery and building walking tracks.  Today seventeen members helped us with restoration planting in an area that had been damaged during the January and February storms.

The group arrived first thing in the morning and included Anil, Alisha, Aman, Amit, Hrithika, Jaanvi, Krishna, Mark, Mihir, Nishkala, Pallavi, Praveen, Sai, Sashika, Serel, Sumer and Yasasvini. 

Everyone in the group was new to CUE Haven so we took some time to get acquainted over morning tea.  Mahrukh then gave an introduction to the CUE Haven project and the plans for the future.

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

The plan was to plant 250+ pioneer trees in an area near the top of the property that had been damaged by Cyclone Gabrielle and to fill in some surrounding areas as well.  We drove up in two groups and Thomas repeated the safety briefing and gave a planting demonstration.  It had rained for most of the night and into the morning but by the time we got on site, the rain had stopped and the clouds were thinning out.

The group then broke into three teams and tackled the various planting areas.  The first task was carrying the plants to the sites.

The teams then went to work.

It was challenging planting because the ground was very muddy and undulating in some areas.

But everyone kept smiling as they worked.

In a few hours the teams managed to plant all of the trees we had for them in spite of the challenging conditions.

They gathered up all of the spades and empty trays to take back down.

The areas where they planted have been completely transformed.

Most of the team then explored the rest of the property by walking back to the cottage by way of the walking track.

In the meantime some team members helped Thomas plant some celebration trees for people who couldn’t join us to plant the trees themselves.  We planted four pukateas in various wetland areas.

The team spent some time cleaning up and then had a relaxing lunch.

The team accomplished an amazing amount of planting in challenging conditions.  Thank you so  very much!

Many thanks to Anil and Selva for organising the volunteer day—Selva, sorry you couldn’t join us and we hope you are feeling better and we look forward to seeing you at another volunteer day.

Huge thanks to everyone for giving up your Sunday and coming out to help!  We really enjoyed meeting everyone and all the interesting conversations. And 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 do 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!!