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 a group of Year 9 Enviro group 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 students Amihr, Divit, Izaak, Jimmy, Lucas, Mark, Simon and Terrence.  The students were accompanied by teachers Amy Bennett and Keryn McAlpine.

Mahrukh gave a brief introduction to CUE Haven and the students also introduced themselves and spoke about their interests in environmental issues.

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

We first went up to Te Rite o Taranaki so that the students could get a look at the growing CUE Haven forest reserve and also the Kaipara Harbour and surrounding area.

We then broke into two teams.  One team worked with Amy on clearing muehlenbeckia australis that was growing over trees.  The meulenbeckia is a native vine that grows up along the edges of regenerating forests and unfortunately it will completely cover and kill small trees unless it is controlled.

The students went to work, clearing off the meulenbeckia vines as they found them.

The enthusiastic team wasn’t afraid to get into the bush to find the source of the vines.

The hard working team managed to clear vines over 1.5 km of roads and tracks!!

The second team went with Thomas and Keryn and started out by helping us do some spring cleaning in the nursery. 

They loaded up some of the items we haven’t been using into the ute and we took them out to another storage area.

We then moved up to the top of the property and the students tackled the muehlenbeckia vines along the main race.

We then moved up to the top of the property and the students tackled the muehlenbeckia vines along the main race.

Along the way, we encountered some benches we’ve been wanting to relocate and the students helped out.

After a couple of hours of hard work, both teams met up at Otakamaitu and Thomas explained the significance of the old Maori settlement.

We then walked back to the cottage for a well deserved lunch.

This was one of the most enthusiastic groups of students we’ve had at CUE Haven.  It was inspiring to see their curiosity and interest as well as their cooperation and thoughtfulness.

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 Keryn for coming along and helping out. 

And a BIG THANK YOU to all the WBHS students. You all worked very hard on a hot day and did a great job and made a very valuable contribution to CUE Haven.  We really appreciate it!!

We hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did. We wish you all the best with your studies and in your endeavours to be guardians of our environment.

We look forward to having you all back for another productive day volunteering at CUE Haven and also for fun visits with your family and friends to explore more of CUE Haven – your community native forest reserve.

Thank You!! Thank You!!