TRIP REPORT : Wainuiomata water catchment

25 February 2007

Pittosporum cornifolium.   Photo: Jeremy Rolfe.

Twenty-five BotSoccers joined a scheduled, public trip into Greater Wellington Regional Council’s (GW) Wainuiomata catchment, part of the recently fenced Wainuiomata-Orongorongo “mainland island”.   After a briefing by Ranger Mark McAlpine, sixty walkers with volunteer guides left the water treatment station and proceeded to George’s Creek.   The standard route for these scheduled walks is a road with no off-track sorties permitted, but the quality of this roadside, heritage forest is such that there is plenty of interest for all.   Regionally significant, it is virgin southern North Island rata/podocarp forest.   Walkers marvelled at 30-m rata, pukatea and rimu towering above, densely clad in luxuriant epiphytes – orchids, lianes, ferns and even an occasional Pittosporum cornifolium and Brachyglottis kirkii.

Mark led the way to the tunnel which pipes water from the Orongorongo catchment to the treatment plant, and showed us the tiny train used for infrastructure maintenance – no rides for us though!   Also with us was staff member Allan Mason who toils to keep invasive weeds such as Buddleja davidii from choking the creeks.   Back on the main route and continuing north, we passed through former farmland now reverting under kanuka, an educative contrast to what we had seen in George’s Creek.   Here we noted with concern that Erica lusitanica / Spanish heath, has colonised many of the steep, road cuttings, but before long we were once again in tall forest.

Raukaua edgerleyi.   Photo: Jeremy Rolfe.

Lunchtime, in the company of a Raukaua edgerleyi epiphytic on a tree fern, beneath magnificent rata and kahikatea, was busy with questions and comments, then it was time to return, dawdling, savouring the privilege of being in this beautiful, pristine, old forest which protects our water supply.

Participants :   Bev Abbott, Ros Batcheler, Barbara Bond, Annadel Bouch, Gavin Dench, Raewyn Empson, Ian and Jill Goodwin, Margaret and Richard Herbert, Edith Hodgson, Chris Horne, Louise Huxley, Barbara Mitcalfe (scribe), Chris Moore, Donella Moss, Leon Perrie, Karen Palmer, Jan Rowland, Sunita Singh, Marc Slade, Joyce Stretton, James Templeton, Yvonne Weeber, Cathy Wylie.