Our month of conservation volunteering with Conservation Volunteers New Zealand (CVNZ) started early on the morning of Monday 21st April. We were picked up from ACB hostel by our team leader for the week - a kiwi called Bruce, and driven to the CVNZ office in Parnell for our induction. An hour later we were on the road, heading 4 hours south to the Kaimai Mamaku Forest Park, to work on a tramway restoration project for a week...
http://www.doc.govt.nz/templates/PlaceProfile.aspx?id=34584
CVNZ operates solely on the North Island of New Zealand currently, with most projects within about a 4 hour radius of Auckland. They are relatively new venture as part of the main Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) organisation, and have a reasonably small team working in the Auckland office, with plans in the future to branch out to the South Island.
http://www.conservationvolunteers.co.nz/
Each week we are posted out on a residential trip to an area in need of conservation or heritage volunteers. Our brief for the first week at Kaimai was to help restore a section of 19th Century logging tramway that ran right through the forest bringing Kauri timber back to the townships to be used for buiding and fuel for the nearby goldmines, but also to maintain and restore footpaths and tracks in conjunction with the Department for Conservation (DOC).
Our accomodation was basic to say the least, as we were bush camping about an hours walk from the nearest road. Our campsite contained an old caravan brought in by helicopter and 4 2 man tents...no electricity or running water (apart from the nearby mountain stream). In our group of 7 people we had to work as a team for a week, cooking cleaning and undertaking the volunteer work throughout the day. We got on really well with everyone in the group straight away as most people are of a similar age - either having just finished Uni like us, or heading to Uni when they get home.
Our first day was spent getting orientated in the dense bushland and setting up camp. We had to transfer food and tools from the van and organise meals for 5 nights. On the Tuesday we started work levelling out a section of footpath and creating an area to display a huge felled Kauri tree for visitors to look at (these trees are some of the tallest in the world and are rare due to logging practices throughout the 20th century). The work we were undertaking was pretty much all manual, so it was a bit of a shock at first to be digging footpaths and moving large rocks and logs around, but everyone chips in and we have a good laugh whilst working. We also had to collect pebbles from the riverside and transfer them to spots along the track.
Evenings were interesting at the camp as we had very little to keep us entertained other than general chit chat and jokes and stories. We played a lot of cards and drank a lot of hot drinks as the temperature really plumited in the evenings. We even had our very own camp Possum called Kevin who regularly came to visit us and jump around our campsite. On Thursday we had to travel further up stream (crossing the rives 4 times in bare feet!) to work on a section of pathway towards the sleeping lodge at the top of the forest. This was fun, if a little cold!
Despite the lack of washing, having to eat basic food and put up with cold temperatures (oh and the home made toilet - a whole in the ground to rival Glastonbury) , the week was had work but really fun and we were bush camping in some amazing scenery. Our first week with CVNZ was hard but really rewarding - we met some great people and got the chance to spend some time in real NZ - somewhere we would never have been able to visit on our regular travels.
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