It has not been the most successful season for planting and weeding, due to the very heavy rainfall, however, thanks to the input from Leigh residents, Jo and Sue Evans and Richard Taylor; along with our contractor, Cam Rathe, we are gradually making headway.

On 19 October Jo and Sue spent two and a half hours in the valley transporting and planting 48 more sedges in the Harvey patch. The sedges and manuka planted at the last working bee were all looking very good however some of the plants yet to be planted were getting a bit root bound in their PB2s.

Cam was employed for another 8 hours, spraying tradescantia and is doing such a great job keeping up with regrowth. It is so good to have his input and to know he is really dedicated to our mission. Hopefully we can continue to employ him. He also re-baited the stations. The recent tally in the traps was a rat, a large stoat, a hedgehog and a young rabbit.

Niklas Erikson planted another 20 sedges on the Watkinson’s property on Saturday, 22 October and on Sunday, 30 October, Jo, Susan and Richard carried approximately 150 sedges up to the planting site and planted 109 of them. There are still a few plants to go in and we should get these planted within the next 4 weeks.

Our main planting project for Winter 2016 had been to plant 300 sedges and 150 manuka plants that were purchased from Te Hana Nurseries on grant money from the Auckland Council (Rodney Local Grants). Originally scheduled for Sunday 24 July, it had to be postponed a couple of times because of atrocious weather forecasts that would have made transporting the plants the nearly 500m up the slippery streamside track to the planting site (in a clearing in the bush on Harvey’s land) very difficult, if not dangerous.

By late September it was getting urgent to get the plants in the ground and we rescheduled the planting for Sunday 2 Oct. However with another lousy forecast for that day a small group of 5 members decided to get as many of the plants as possible across the stream and on to the track on Saturday morning. Two full ute-loads of plants were driven down to the bottom of the concrete driveway beside the Lee’s brown cottage from where Peter Watkinson ferried them on his 4-wheel-drive mule through his campsite to the stream crossing. We carried all the plants across the stream, stock-piling them beside the track and beginning the transfer to the planting site 250m further upstream.

The next day a workforce of 8 members [Jo & Susan, Arthur & Trish, Neil and Sheryl, John H, Richard T] turned up at 9am in overcast but not unpleasant conditions to transfer more plants and begin planting. Our priority was to first get the manuka planted in the higher, drier parts of the clearing –  that had been sprayed earlier to kill rampant Tradescantia. After nearly an hour we started on the sedges, lower down where the ground was wetter.

And that was when the forecast deluge began. We carried on planting with thunder and lightning crashing above and water pouring through the site in rushing rivulets. At least we could see where the ground was wettest and some effort went into channelling the water into more defined streams so that our planting holes did not immediately fill up with water.

By 10.45 we had used up all the plants carried up from the stockpile. The stream had risen to become a fast torrent and we could not cross it to bring up any more so we decided to call it a day. We couldn’t go back the way we had come and had to get out of the valley up through Harvey’s  property negotiating the overgrown, slip-damaged track and the waist-high kikuyu paddock.

All participants went home to get dry and warm feeling some satisfaction that they had achieved a lot in a short time. There remain probably about 170 sedges left to bring up and plant and this could be achieved  by several small sessions over the next few weeks.