Last week we were further north of the West coast in a town called Karamea. It was another remote town with a population of 650, the locals call it the end of the road because there isn't a road going through it. On our first day of work we were welcomed by a guy called George who gave us a welcome speech in Maori, something about being at one with the wind and the mountains. Another of the locals called Hamish translated the speech (it definitely sounded better in Maori). When it wasn't raining were working in an area along the estuary and on the beach. We helped to maintain one of the paths along the estuary and made a new track through about 200 metres of gorse. As usual we planted more trees, about 600 this week. All along this West Coast has had very heavy rainfall this September and on our last day of work we had the heaviest rain yet and there was alot of flooding. We were unable to work outside so went to two of the local volunteers house (Hamish and Margaret). We spent the day collecting seedlings from there land and potting them up in the Nursery to enable that they could grow to a good size before being replanted at the reserve. Hamish and Margaret owned 7 acres of land where they grew organic veg, reared sheep and had a tea tree plantation which they made tea tree oil. We were give a bottle each when we left which was useful as I've been bitten about 22 times by sandflys.
In our spare time we also visited some natural limestone arches that were in the middle of some forest, they were the biggest natural arches in the southern hemisphere. We also went caving and saw some glow-worms and some interesting landforms.
We are back in Punakaiki for the weekend and will be heading furter south next week to Otago and will be doing some work at Sinclair wetlands. Only two more weeks left of work in NZ until i get a week off and head to Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment