About 80 people (mostly high school aged youngsters) alight from our smaller ferry and set off along the gravel 4x4 road, past the narrow isthmus separating the beach either side of the island and up to the Woolshed half the way along the island, where we'll be working until lunch time.
After a quick tutorial from the Motuihe Trust organisers, most of the large group set to our task of planting many hundreds of seedlings into the trays, and a small group head off to go weeding. Most of us were planting Matakohe and nearer to lunchtime a few of us planted some small Euphorbia plants into PB3 bags.
With lunchtime at 1pm, the bbq was fired up before then, with the torture of tasty smelling bbq sausages cooking just a few metres away, making us all ravenous! Yay! Time to gobble down a sausage and lunch.
After lunch, a change of pace, we all head off to go find seeds. Thankfully we're not talking tiny seeds, we're on the hunt for Puriri seeds, but only black ones! Apparently the green or reddy ones just rot. Not long after we head into the coastal forest section of the island, we hear a cacophony of birdsong. Shortly after looking up to see 4 Saddlebacks playing in the Pohutukawa branches above us, with more in the general area. They seem quite nonchalant in our presence and stay quite a while. Where's a camera when needed!!! Right, off we head, we have seeds to find! We reach the Puriri grove, and start fossicking through the undergrowth for the seeds. Success!
We found out later on, the back of the group spotted a Tuatara tail heading back into a nook!
Back out onto the open track back down to the Woolshed to learn how to plant Puriri seeds. It's about 2.30pm now, so we tidy up and have time to leisurely head back down to the ferry for 3.30pm. A lot of the youngsters opting to play a game of footy on the beach, with the clean sets of waves crashing down behind. Typical trampers, we opt for a wander up the hill to check out the large, currently swampy camping grounds after the last few days of liquid sunshine and then up through the Norfolk Pine tree lined driveway to a large sign with the historical timeline of the island going back to the 1830's. There's even a little shop between the two beaches that operated until 2002, where boaties and visitors to the island alike could stop and buy an ice block. Very interesting.
We've had a thoroughly enjoyable day, and it was really great to be able to do more of the planting process, from seed, to transplanting seedlings into larger trays.
It's really a beautiful island, and I only wish we'd had more time for a good nosey around to see more of the birdlife and soak up the island history. Although we've been invited back if we'd like to stay for a weekend of wandering around.