Mud, wrestling and all that comes along.

March 11th, 2009 by agilbert

Today the team was split into two groups, so we were in threesomes, which was a good idea, as there was more work to go around. Our team, Jamie and Devon and myself landed the Paekakariki gig first, so off we went under the bridge and over the hill. We were greeted with machetes and grubbers and were informed that we would be making a new track. Little did we know how hard of work it would be. We started up off the nice, docile hill and were soon up to our knees in bush. We were taken aback for only a moment before we pulled out our handy dandy machetes and started chopping away. The rest of the morning consisted of some intense wrestling matches with vines that never ended and fennel roots that wouldn’t give until we were drenched in sweat and exhausted.

After we had cleared away as much of the bush as we could, we traded our machetes for grubbas and hacked away at what was left of the bush and built a track. Our skill with the grubbers would have been envied at lumberjack shows with the way we sped through the morning. By 11:30 we had finished our track and Toby was due to pick us up.

After lunch at Nga Manu, we headed back out to the boardwalk we had been working on yesterday and the other half of the group worked on in the morning. We admired our handiwork before jumping into the mud and getting our hands dirty, literally. Our tasks for today consisted of carrying the old boardwalk to the entrance of the track to make way for the new boardwalk, shoveling gravel into pails and bringing them back to fill in the holes so the posts didn’t sink into the mud and holding the posts while Reese pounded them in with a sledgehammer. We had a few minor mishaps, which included Jamie almost hitting Reese with a sledge hammer (she soon traded places with him after this incident) and I almost fell into the pit of mud below while carrying a 20 pound pail of gravel, but instead my legs just slipped out from underneath me and went on either side of the board.

The rest of the afternoon came and went without any negative side affects and soon we were off to back to the hutt.