Sometimes it’s hard to tell how a thing is going to work out unless you just get on and build it.
In this case, Mark, Murray, Andrew and especially Jonathan were happy to just make it up as they went along. Bloody good fun!
Now at the end of the trip we thought “if just we had one more day…”
We were totally deluded. More on that later.
There are few holidays as satisfying as a ‘conservation vacation’ at Rameka and this time we shared the experience with Kevin – a solid volunteer from USA; Sean – a carrick building musicologist; and Geoff – gainfully employed prof from VUW. It was an unusual trip, with a variety of missions.
We started by building the foundations for a sleeping POD, which is essentially a wooden tent, possibly, maybe, well we will just make it up as we go and find out at the end of the job exactly what it is.
Bronnies main mission, with help from a very nice woman who was dropping her kids off to go mountain biking, was to ‘Release’ the previously planted trees. In other words, stop them from being smothered by weeds. They only have to grow a metre tall and then they can look after themselves.
An on the last day we had a work party with about twenty people and built another chunk of the Odyssey – a track that is living up to it’s name because the terrain down in the side gut is horribly tough.
Yippy! It’s time to head down to Project Rameka for some tree planting.
This year’s goal was to plant out the slip face with 200-odd tutu, which has one of the best root profiles for retaining banks – and slipfaces apparently. It will never grow into an impressive forest giant, but it will attract the birds, and at this stage, we’re keen on anything that will help stop the land sliding away and causing any more damage in the next serious rain event.
And after the tutu, there were more luscious native species to plant out along the historic section of the old Rameka pack track heading in to Great Expectations and The Odyssey.
A fantastic workparty on Sunday 18 August saw 20-odd volunteers planting out miro, hinau, totara, wineberry, rimu, lemonwood … a whole feast of fantastic canopy and sub-canopy natives that can just chug their way up to the heavens.
Greg Thurlow joined us just in time. We called him our ‘earthquake refugee’, as the large 6.6 Friday earthquake took place a matter of hours before his ferry had him on his way from Wellington for a two-week holiday. He was happy to lend some muscle to ferry the plants down the track, dig holes for them and then, in the afternoon, tidy up the track, making it a bit wider and smoothing out some ruts and boggy bits.
The annual Project Rameka AGM took place on Friday 24 May 2013. Andrew McLellan and Jonathan Kennett made a stealth mission from Wellington across to the Bay to take part in it and check out how things were progressing on the Project in general …
So the Project appears to be chugging along just dandy, thanks very much. And the AGM? Such events are always useful. They’re a great way of forcing everyone to stop, collect their thoughts and celebrate the Project’s successes – all of which we’ve covered in earlier posts. AGMs are also a good time to plan for the year ahead. And what are the plans?
Definitely continuing the Odyssey grade 4 track down to the valley so that expert riders can have a bit more space to challenge themselves but also so that more area will be opened up on the Project for pest control.
Pest controller Matt Shoult is still finding lots of damage from pigs roaming into the property from a range of points along the northwestern boundary, and mustelids and possums are relentless in their rovings through the area. Albie and Fil Burgess and Paul Kilgour are doing a fantastic job of knocking back the rat and mustelid populations with a well-established trapping line around the upper reaches of the Project. This line is being extended along The Odyssey as and when funds become available.
At this stage, a big nod must go to Kevin Hague from the Green Party for his contribution of funds to these traps. Kevin offsets his carbon footprint from all his work travel requirements with payments to the Project, and his offsetting goes straight into pest control and plants. Can’t think of a better way to mitigate carbon pollution.
31 March and 1 April 2013
The Odyssey track building competition over Easter saw 55 people carve over 1000 metres of track. It ended up spanning two days, because we tried unsuccessfully to postpone on Sunday when the weather started out looking diabolical, but three Nelson teams were already on their way, despite torrential rain. Luckily it fined up, and they were joined by a dozen locals and the Kennett clan team from Wellington.
On Sunday, competitors built the track all the way through the pines to the 800 metre mark. First equal, having built 160 metres each, were the Quiet Revolution team and the Kennett clan team. The Trail Saints from Nelson were only 10 metres behind in third place.
The weather was perfect on Monday the 1 April, so 30 Golden Bay locals entered, but the building was much tougher as we carved across a steep scrubby face for almost 300
metres.
The end result is that well over half the track has been built. It is currently grade 4 in the pines and grade 5 below that. There is still a fair chunk of work to go, so it probably won’t be
rideable all the way through until summer.
Many thanks to the event sponsors for prizes and materials: Ground Effect, Giro, Cycletech, Quiet Revolution Cycle Shop and The Kennett Brothers.
