It was great to have our friends from ANZ’s  Auckland North Mobile Mortgage Banking group out to help us with the CUE Haven cleanup.  The group arrived first thing in the morning and included Anmaree,  Ashleigh, Jacinta, James , Jia, Jing,  Justeel , Kelley and Mike.

All of the group had been to CUE Haven volunteering before so we spent morning tea catching up and then Thomas gave a safety briefing and an overview of the plan for the day.

We are still cleaning up after cyclone Gabrielle but the end is in sight and today we had a variety of little jobs at different corners of the property to tackle.  We broke into two teams and went to work.

One team worked near the bottom of the property clearing a track and repairing damage in the wetlands.

Thomas explained the objective and the route to take and the team went to work clearing debris off the road and trimming overhanging vegetation.

They had to deal with a few small trees that had come down across the track.

The track and road are looking great thanks to the team’s hard work.  They then moved to the wetlands where high water had left debris on some of the smaller trees.  They cut away weeds and cleared the trees to make sure they can grow straight.

They then moved over to the wetlands boardwalk, clearing vegetation and releasing small trees.

They repaired some damaged screening on the boardwalk.

An amazing amount of water came down the catchment and even washed away one of the benches from the boardwalk bridge.  It was well downstream and in a very wet spot and we’d been waiting for things to dry out a bit more before retrieving it.  But James and Ashleigh waded in and got the bench back to where it belongs.

The team accomplished a huge amount of work and did a lot of tasks that made a big difference—thanks!

The second team worked with Thomas at the opposite end of the property.  They started out clearing a service road that leads to a walking track that had been covered with fallen branches and some larger trees.

The job involved hard work with saws and loppers.

The service road connects to the Tanekaha track which presented a different set of challenges.  The track was covered with branches and twigs and there were some larger trees down as well.

The team went to work with rakes, loppers and saws and got the track looking better than ever.

The track has been totally transformed!

The team then moved on to the Taraire track that had been cleared but had sustained water damage due to an overflowing drain.

They inspected the drain and cleaned it out and determined that the pipeline was clear.

The drain flows under a bridge on the walking track and the team found that debris under the bridge had kept water from flowing downstream.  They reefed up the bridge and dug out the area and installed an additional drain pipe to handle any future overflows.

They then smoothed out the damaged sections of track and brought down some gravel to restore the track to its previous condition. 

We loaded up bucked with gravel.

The buckets were carried down to the work site and the gravel was dumped on the tracked and raked smooth.

Thanks to the team’s ingenuity and hard work, the track is looking better than ever.

They then brought up all the gear and we headed back to the cottage for a well deserved lunch.

Both teams accomplished an amazing amount of work and we definitely have the worst of the cyclone cleanup behind us.  It was a challenging day because we’d asked the teams to do a lot of little jobs in different parts of the property but they handled the logistics challenges very well.

We want to thank Jim for organising the day and for continuing to support CUE Haven at ANZ.  Jim, sorry you couldn’t join us today but we look forward to seeing you again soon at another ANZ volunteer day.

And a huge thank you to the hard working group.  We really enjoyed seeing you all again and appreciate your hard work and dedication. We hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did and we look forward to seeing you all again for a relaxing visit soon.

Thank You!! Thank You!!