Omar David Garcia Hoyos passed away seven years ago, and every year since then his family and friends have been remembering and celebrating his life with volunteer days at CUE Haven. Omar’s siblings, Vanessa and Hernan organized yet another wonderful volunteer group on Saturday.

Friends and family on site today included Omar’s family members Alba, Omar, Vanessa, Hernan, Ash and Emi as well as friends Alex R, Alex S, Andrew, Brittany, Fleur, Katherine, Sonny and Tash.  Also joining in were young people Beauden, Briar, Lily and Scarlet.

People started arriving around 9.30 and caught up over morning tea.  

We welcomed everyone and then Thomas gave a description of the activities planned for the day and a safety briefing.

The plan for the day was to do some autumn maintenance.  Because of the size of the group, we broke into two teams.  One team went with Alba to trim vegetation that had grown over the roads and boardwalk over the summer. 

The other team worked with Thomas to do a variety of walking track improvement tasks.

Alba’s team worked their way down the main race to the boardwalk, trimming overhanging branches and clearing weeds.  The trimming was also something the younger volunteers could help with.

The track team headed out to work on levelling off sections of the Kukupa Track that were showing signs of wear.  The work involved filling in low spots to ensure the track is level and smooth, as well as various other track challenges.

To fill in the low spots, they dug out clay from areas adjacent to the track and carried it to where it was needed.

They levelled off the track surface and the end result is great!

As a section was finished, they moved up the track to the next spot needing work.

In one spot the side board had moved out of alignment and the team replaced it.

One of the bigger challenges the team tackled was fixing up low spot at one end of a bridge over the wetlands stream.  The area flooded during last year’s storms and we had earlier dug a channel to divert water from the track, but seepage frequently made the track section very muddy.

The team dug up clay and brought it down in several bucket loads and levelled off the surface with rakes and the area is now high and dry.

The team finished off their improved track sections by putting down a layer of gravel.  We drove up to the gravel pile and filled buckets.

The full buckets were loaded onto the ute and driven down as close to the work area as possible.

The buckets were carried to the various track areas that had been fixed up, the gravel dumped on the track and raked smooth.

Thanks to the team’s efforts, the track is looking better than ever.

Before…

After…

After a morning of hard work, everyone broke for a relaxing lunch and socializing.

Because of other commitments, several people who wanted to participate in the day to remember Omar could only visit for a brief time.  Also joining us throughout the day were Adele, Brittany, Jesicca, Mel, Miah, Riz and Troi.  Riz brought bouquets of flowers to help celebrate Mother’s Day.

Riz had beautiful custom designed t-shirts made up to celebrate and remember Omar, which he donated to CUE Haven. The group members purchased the t-shirts as part of a fundraiser that Vanessa is organising for CUE Haven’s upcoming capital project.    Our heartfelt thanks to Riz, Vanessa and everyone for their generosity and continued support.

After lunch the group took a leisurely walk to the wetlands to visit Omar’s memorial tree.

It was a great day of remembrance and fellowship.  We want to thank the Garcia Hoyos family for their friendship and continued support of CUE Haven and for organising the day and for again bringing their amazing friends to help out.

And a BIG thank you to everyone for giving up your Saturday morning and coming out to help.  It is always great seeing old friends and meeting new ones and we enjoyed the many interesting conversations.  And we really appreciate all your hard work and efforts.  You have all made a major contribution to CUE Haven and we very much look forward to seeing you all again soon for another fun and productive day.

THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!