Another absolutely stunning, very calm day dawned for our club planting trip over to Motuihe Island & really big group of keen NSTC'ers & the general public ready to plant or work in the nursery.  

A quick trip over to Motuihe via Rangitoto to drop other passengers there and onto our destination.  Upon reaching Motuihe a quick bio-security briefing and off to load up many hundreds of trees and equipment onto the tractor and head down the island towards Bald Knob again.  But not as far along the track.  This time planting a mixture of natives from potentially large or tall trees such as Puriri, Kanuka on the higher side of the road and smaller Flax  on the lower side, so as not to obscure the views.   With most of the trees providing valuable food sources at different times of the year to the islands' native winged inhabitants.  

We seemed to blitz through planting the trees with such large numbers of people overall, despite the steep terrain.  All good fun & very satisfying to be part of something so worthy and to see progress of our previous years of planting!!   This island is looking amazing!

Trees in situ, we meandered back to the Woolshed to partake in the yummy bbq'd sausages and tea and coffee the island kindly provides the planters and nursery crew.

As we were doing so well for time, some of the groups opted to go for a walk, with the reward of seeing a good sized Tuatara and a lot of us opting to enjoy the very warm waters and the stunning Autumn day to spend a decent amount of time swimming!   What a way to end another totally awesome day on the island & smooth trip back to the mainland.

If you've not done tree planting, whether it be on one of the Hauraki Gulf's treasure islands or the mainland, it's so rewarding and incredible atmosphere of people so excited to be part of something that is so important.