Tawharanui

View from outside our house in Tawharnui

CVNZ's no 1 tree killing duo, doin what we do best

Thats me on a hill

We are now a fully fledged CVNZ death squad. Spent the week in the forests and hills of Tawharanui hunting down the enemies of the land. My weapons of choice, a handsaw, a bottle of poison and a grubber(kind of like a strange axe). Our targets, thistles, moth plant and climbing Asparagus. We went two days combing the bush for these evil plant using our expert CVNZ skills to track them down. What skills you ask? Well this is how it usually goes down. We see a plant and we say "WAYNE! Is this it? They all look the same..." Aside from thistles, we know what they look like. Have to hack down hundreds of em over the past few days.

Oh a quick mention of our Head Executioner* Wayne. Great leader. Always have a good laugh with him. He apparently somehow ingested an encyclopedia about New Zealand at some point in his life. He has a vast knowledge of weeds and is pretty knowedgable about pretty much everything that has anything to do with New Zealand as well. It's like having a tour guide the whole. Wait no scratch that, having a tour guide all the time would be horrible. This is actually interesting. So it's somewhat like having a tour guide. Also need to extend a big thanks to him seeing as he introduced us volunteers to Flight of Conchords which has now almost become ingrained in our minds.

So on our brief breaks from hunting down renegade greenery there was a night time walk through the bush, listening out for Kiwi. Really cool, Tawharnui is a reserve for rare birds. There's a big fence around the whole park to keep out rats, cats, ferrets and possums. And because of the lack of predators the place is amazing at night. Loads of very interesting birdcalls and such. And funny little insects that do the breaststroke. Oh I've just realised I haven't explained about Tawharanui a'tall. It's an Auckland regional park, bout an hour and a half north of the city. Its a part of a peninsula which has a big predator fence running around the park. Kinda reminiscint of Jurassic Park when entering/leaving cause the forest here look very like the ones featured in those movies. Beside our house was a lagoon and after that large green hills(some heavily forested) dot the landscape and on either side of the land mass are beaches. One in particular called Anchor bay was very beautiful. A long white sand beach, which has had no development so it's unplagued by horrible seaside town and hordes of people. Dolphins paid a visit to the beach one of the days, was pretty cool. The HE(head executioner) and the Frenchie* went swimming with them.

Not much else to report, back in Auckland now for a long weekend. YAY! Then back to Hamilton next week. YAY! Again. So disappointing afer being in Tawharnui. Oh well, was on Rangitoto today. Weather here is now brilliant, sun shining, bright blue sky and turqiouse ocean what more could you want. Also could actually see the view from the top of the island today, fantastic.

*This is the term CVNZ insist we use, personally we prefer the term team leader.

** Frenchie is in fact a lady called Isaelle who is a Parisian doctor and isn't really too bad for a french person. Good Luck if you're reading Isabelle will give you a shout if I ever find myself in Paris