Every year the VIP Kayak Day is different, we’ve had super hot summer days when most guest went for a voluntary dip in the clear Waitakere river, a chilly day in October, postponed by covid from March, and this year a post-cyclone silted river adventure. Three out of four groups avoided the rain – despite the forecast of much more downpours! A huge thank you to all our guests who support our wetland by joining this day, experiencing Auckland’s largest wetland in a unique way. Re-introduced pateke (brown teal) were seen, as well as flocks of kereru, putangitangi (paradise ducks), lots of native forest birds and unfortunately also a lot of non-natives: plants (weeds) as well as animals (geese). Our namesake Matuku (bittern) didn’t show him/herself this year, maybe because some of our visitors saw it fly from the raupo on Wednesday morning?
The team of 14 volunteers on the day everything from registrations to ‘dragging’ where the kayaks couldn’t float, sizzling to servinc, driving to guiding… I know some will feel their muscles today… THANK YOU to all of them. Those thank you also extend to the volunteers who prepared for the day cooking, baking, cleaning, digging out the river, and loading the kayaks. We can’t do this day without the actual kayaks – so kindly delivered to us by Brian Harvey from the Lynfield Scouts Group. Without trustees John Sumich and John Staniland, respectively on water and on land, are the founders of Matuku Link. Without them this place wouldn’t exist, it would have been subdivided in up to six different private properties… thank you for supporting their vision to conserve this for future generations.
See you soon at one of our other events, nga mihi,
Annalily van den Broeke
All images by our voluntary photographers Stefan Marks and Eric van Essen, in between guiding and pulling kayaks in-and out of the water! – thank you!
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