Four members of A Rocha Wellington travelled to the Monastery at Kopua to join with a small team of Cistercian Associates in a Kopua Riki working bee during Anzac weekend (23-26 April).
Helen arrived a day early and spent a couple of hours on Thursday continuing the clearing English Ivy by hand from the start of Roberts Way. A lot of the ivy had already been cleared but there was still a significant amount around the edges of the original patch.
Terry, Irene and Elizabeth arrived on Thursday afternoon ready to begin work on Friday Morning. This was a day when only the A Rocha people were present. Terry spent all day working at clearing a site around some of the Stations of the Cross where we plan to plant at Kings Birthday Weekend. We are going to plant low growing native shrubs such as hebes etc. to enhance the area but yet keep the Stations clearly visible.
Meantime, Helen, Irene and Elizabeth went down to the hermitage. Their task was to find the hebes that A Rocha Wellington had planted at Matariki in 2025 and release them. This was not an easy job as quite a few of them had become hidden in the long grass. Helen then worked around the wider area taking bamboo stakes from plants that no longer needed them and using them to mark the hebes so they could be found in the future. We continued on to release other plants in the area and Irene cut and pasted some blackberry.
In the afternoon Terry continued his work of clearing the site to be planted at King’s Birthday while Irene and Helen cleared more ivy. The ivy clearing is an ongoing task as there is still more to do.
On Saturday the A Rocha folk were joined by Mike and Norm from the Associates and Harriet from up the road. Terry continued working at site preparation while Helen, Irene and Elizabeth joined the others working at the site of the future Suzanne Aubert Memorial Forest. The allotted task was to find and deal to Spanish broom. The smaller plants could be pulled out by the roots while the larger ones needed cutting and pasting. We found ourselves also doing some releasing as we came across plants that were vanishing under the long grass. Mike did some work clearing the trail that leads down into the Suzanne Aubert Forest.
After morning tea Irene and Terry went to do more site preparation around the Stations of the Cross while everyone else was engaged in clearing out a shed. The shed had been given to the Kopua Riki project by the monastery but was full of disused stuff some of which had been there for many years. Our job was to clear it out, move usable stuff into the garage next door and pile up the rubbish.
The shed will need more work before it becomes a useful store for equipment used at Kopua Riki. The domestic poultry at Kopua now includes a flock of eighteen inquisitive black ducks who were most interested in watching the shed being cleared
In the afternoon Terry continued site preparation while Elizabeth and Irene helped to plant ake ake in the Suzanne Aubert Forest and did further Spanish broom control.
On Sunday morning Terry and Irene visited all four bird counting stations and did five-minute bird counts. They noted a species that they had not heard before; the white-faced heron. Also present but not heard during the bird counts were ruru and domestic chickens.
