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Volunteers at Warkworth’s Parry Kauri Park have been busy with their ladders and toolkits this month, erecting a new shelter over one of the park’s picnic tables.
Kauri & Native Bushmen’s Association president Ray Jensen, who has been volunteering at the park for an incredible 51 years, oversaw the operation to construct the second of two such structures.
The first of these was provided by Auckland Council more than a year ago, following relocation of the tables from the lawn in front of the giant McKinney kauri tree to a grassy area just off the driveway into the park and Warkworth Museum.
The tables were moved when a new fence was put up by council between the carpark and the iconic tree to minimise the risk of people spreading kauri dieback – a new park entrance with a footwear hygiene station and walkway was installed at the same time.
“When council built the fence, they moved the picnic tables and we suggested they put a roof over them, so council did one and we did the other one,” Jensen says.
‘Doing the other one’ was not quite as straightforward as he makes it sound, however. First, there was the small matter of raising around $17,000 to buy it – a hefty price tag, but this type of shelter is no flimsy garden gazebo.
“They’re an Australian kit-set and designed for cyclone areas,” Jensen says, pointing out the double-thickness timber supports anchored into a concrete base with galvanised steel plates. Two days after installation, his knuckles still show bruises from screwing in the four hefty bolts required for each upright.
Jensen was assisted by Brian Algie, Nick Sharp and Galvin Milich, whose experience running Kitset Assembly Services Rodney was just what was needed on the day.
The money to buy the picnic shelter was raised the same way as the volunteers always raise funds to maintain and improve the park – from visitor donations left in a secure collection box at the entrance to the walkway.
Projects completed by the Bushmen’s Association over the years include everything from digging drains, re-roofing buildings and building picnic tables to removing and cleaning numerous small labels that are placed along the forest walkway identifying many of the plants and trees.
The volunteers’ biggest achievement, though, was the creation of the park’s 1.8km walkway in the first place, which was laid between 1992 and 2014.
A few years later, when the threat of kauri dieback loomed large, council worked with the association to re-route and upgrade the walkway, taking it up off the forest floor and making it wheelchair-accessible in the process.
The resulting boardwalk – which looks and feels like wood, but is actually made from recycled plastic – meanders through native bush into a majestic kauri grove where the trees stand sentinel, reaching for the sky.
“I call this the cathedral,” Jensen says, craning his neck upwards. “I love coming here. Every day I see something different.”
As if to illustrate the point, he glances over the walkway fence on the way out and immediately spots two minuscule native orchids, a Green Hood and a Mosquito, just coming into flower in the leaf litter.
“When I first came here in 1974, there were sheep in here and nothing grew at all,” he says.
Now, Jensen collects young native seedlings and seeds from the thriving forest floor and grows them in pots to sell at the Warkworth Museum fundraising plant stall.
It’s not just the flora that have increased over the years – both the park and museum attract increasing numbers of visitors, from school groups to bus tours.
“Some days the park is so full of visitors that we really need more walkway,” he says. “We had 133 through here last week from Warkworth Primary and Kaipara Flats Schools, and there was one day last year when we had five buses in from cruise ships.”
Jensen says he’d like to see the rest of the walkway completed, but for the time being, it’s something more mundane that’s required.
“We need a new mower first, our one is pretty much rusted out,” he says.
Auckland Council’s operations manager for Rodney, Geoff Pitman, said staff were currently exploring if it would be possible to complete the loop track, but said nothing would be happening any time soon.
“It’s important that we ensure the project can be completed without putting the kauri trees at risk. If so, a proposal would be put forward to the Rodney Local Board in a future work programme to undertake this work,” he said.
“Given the challenges and cost associated with this work, as well as the current three-year work programme which is fully allocated, any proposed project would be a number of years away.”
Anyone who could donate a mower to the Bushmens’ Association or who would like to volunteer can contact Ray Jensen on 021 031 9783 or jetsen@xtra.co.nz
Parry Kauri Park – a brief history.
At the time of European settlement, the 8.5-hectare Parry Kauri Park was part of the property farmed by Rev Robert McKinney and his family from the mid-1800s until 1919, when it was bought by the Simpsons. With many large kauri having been cleared and felled, the trees on the Simpson property became a local attraction and when the land was later sold to Dennis Ingham, it was made a condition of sale that the land should be offered to the Warkworth Town Council if anyone ever wanted to fell the biggest trees.
“In 1965, Dennis Ingham had an offer to cut the two big kauri,” Ray Jensen says.
When the town council couldn’t raise the money, Harry Parry and Tudor Collins of the Kauri and Native Bushmen’s Association managed to buy the trees and the land they sat on – hence the names Parry Kauri Park and Tudor Collins Drive for the entranceway.
“They donated it all to the Warkworth Town Council, which became Rodney District Council and then Auckland Council, but the Bushmen’s Association did most of the work,” he adds.
“We keep the association going as a memorial to those guys who had the initiative to save the trees.”
The two biggest kauri are named after the park’s early landowners – McKinney is between 800 and 900 years old, more than 38 metres tall and with a girth of more than 10 metres, while the Simpson kauri is around 500 years old, 37 metres tall and 7.75 metres round.
