‘Hill gang’ waging war on brambles, boulders, gorse

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 21

‘Hill gang’ waging war on brambles, boulders, gorse

By

STAN DARLING,

Pictures by Des Woods

Cliff Holdsworth takes a couple of expert swipes at a blackberry plant with his sheath knife.

He gestures animatedly with the knife at places where blackberry still pokes from the rocks, but won’t for much longer. This hot Tuesday, one of many spent on the Port Hills since he and the late Cedric Turner started a volunteer work party in 1968, Mr Holdsworth and two retired companions are using the cut and poison method on noxious weeds at the edge of Kennedys Bush.

Soon it will be time to start clearing areas for the new planting season, and after that “the hill gang” as they are sometimes called (Mr Holdsworth prefers to call it the hill group — more polite) will do some more fencing.

Port Hills reserves are still threatened by wandering stock, weeds and vandals, and the hill gang are doing their best — for the sheer pleasure of it — to keep at least a step ahead. “You sometimes wonder just what progress you’re making,” says Mr Holdsworth, a retired Lands and Survey chief draughtsman. Down the hill, brushing poison on to the foliage of weeds that surround young native plants, are a retired Lands and Survey chief surveyor, Dick Innes, and Bert Thompson, who was with the Post Office until he retired.

They are both members of the hill gang’s second generation, and like other volunteers, they are learning as they go. Along with his workmates, Mr Thompson is a member of the .Summit Road Society. “I was on one of the society’s walks and was taken by what they are trying to do,” says Mr Thompson. “I thought, I’ll join them when I retire. I was amazed at their fitness. I thought I would never be as fit, and some of them were at least 1.0 years older. “I was running behind like a little puppy. It took me a year before I could walk up without puffing.” Mr Innes tears out young gorse plants hidden in the long grass and leaves them in the sun.

“Even that’s too good a death for them,” he says.

Kennedys Bush, now covering about 80 hectares and nurtured since the early 1900 s, has a lot of regenerating native bush, but it also has the gorse seedlings. “They come up like hair on a

cat’s back,” says Mr Holdsworth. “We try to suppress the blackberry, and there is a forest of broom seedlings coming up.” In spite of a constant round of cutting and poisoning, they still come. At least the men can see

progress reasonably quickly in the patches they attack with poisonfilled brushes. This Tuesday, a stand of beheaded and stripped Californian thistle is already dying back after poisoning earlier in the day.

Mr Holdsworth thinks that a more suitable cover crop might keep much of the weed growth from springing back. “Tree lucerne has been suggested,” he says, “if the possums would leave it alone.”

When shadows block the sunlight, the gorse goes down and will eventually fade out. “Its doom is sealed once you’ve cut the sun right off,” says Mr Holdsworth.

One answer might be to plant the natives closer together. “I think the technique would be to smother the area with sheer weight of plants so that they produce shade,” he says. In the late 19605, he and Mr Turner retired at about the same time. They had both been members of the Canterbury Mountaineering Club for years. “We put our heads together,” says Mr Holdsworth, “and thought we should try to leave the place better than we found it.” At about the same time, vandals had run cars off the Summit Road twice, then stripped and set fire to them. The second time, quite a bit of damage had been done to Kennedys Bush. Further east at Sugar Loaf, Mr Holdsworth and Mr Turner started their fencing career by putting up simple barriers against rocks that had been rolled down the slopes and into the bush.

Huia Gilpin, who was director of the Christchurch City Council parks department that manages the Port Hills reserves, asked if they wanted to move on to even bigger projects. They went on to some fencing work at the Ahururi reserve, and later to Cass Peak.

“Our skills at fencing grew with experience and observation,” says Mr Holdsworth. “We would see a professionally built fence and have a good look at it.” Mr Thompson, who has been on the work party for five years, has studied fencing at Lincoln College field days. Recent fencing done along the Summit Road above Kennedy Bush has solved the problem of rocks in the road shoulder.

A tough fencing job some years ago took the toll of Mr Turner’s health, and he had to lay off for a few years because of a heart problem. He came back to the hill gang,

and only last year died while on a tramp of the St James Walkway. The work party has also done some track formation, and Cedric’s Track — a link between the Sugar Loaf car park and the Sign of the Kiwi — was named for him recently. Earlier, a circuit, track through Kennedys Bush was named for Mr Holdsworth, who helped build it. Over the years, the hill gang has strung between two and three miles of fence.

They asked the City Council if they could put a fence down an incline at the western edge of Kennedys Bush, but their council supervisors were cool towards the idea.

“They said we were too old and doddery,” says Mr Holdsworth, who was slowed down but not stopped last winter by rheumatism in his hip. “They’re probably right. It’s quite steep.” Mr Thompson is not so sure. “We’ve done worse,” he says. “We would do all their fencing if we had the chance.”

They have been offered a fencing

job where sheep have been getting in along a boundary of Scott Reserve.

“I told them it is not a very good winter job because it has to be done in the shade of the trees,” says Mr Holdsworth. He told them if it got too cold, they might have to consider chopping down some of the trees for a fire.

One of the hill gang’s early jobs was the fencing of Dry Bush on Mt Vernon. There had been stock and rabbit damage, and destruction by burning. They started negotiating with the farming block’s owner, and were able to get the work done. Now that the Civic Trust is proposing a public purchase of the Mt Vernon block, Mr Holdsworth looks forward to a day when the bush could be expanded, with more planting and more fencing. For now, though, the weeds come first.

“We’ve skittled quite a lot of it,” says Mr Holdsworth of the blackberry. That and other weeds have done in some of the work party’s planting over the years, along with

drought and rabbit damage. Weeds are meticulously brushed with poison against home-made, pallet-like boards to keep the native plants from being touched by the killing juice.

“For council employees to tackle a job like this, it would break the Bank of England,” says Mr Holdsworth. Paying wages to get the job done is out of the question. The work party, which usually has about six volunteers these days, would welcome new members “with open arms,” he says, “but most people seem to prefer to play bowls or make home brew, or something like that.

“They are good guys who come up here, great pals. We don’t drive anybody. When you’ve had enough, sit down and enjoy the view. You can see there’s scope for all the labourers of China here.”

Work party members have been heartened by the recent formation of a second volunteer group along the eastern stretch of the Summit Road.

Mr Tim Sundstrum, another Summit Road Society member, took the initiative to encourage mainly retired and semi-retired men from the Sumner area to start work projects in the hills. Their first job, a revamping of the historic Major Hornbrook Track from Lyttelton to a saddle between Mt Pleasant and Mt Cavendish, has virtually been completed. Stiles and marker posts were among their contributions to the track.

“It sort of got infectious, this idea,” says Mr Holdsworth. “We’re very pleased to hear about them. It’s a bit out of our parish.” Peter Johnson, a City Council parks and recreation department supervisor in charge of Port Hills reserves, has been impressed over the years by the hill gang’s work. “I couldn’t do without the guys up there,” he says. “They’re mighty. We talk over different ideas for jobs, and what needs doing.” Mr Johnson is a carpenter by trade, and the retired workers taught him what he knows about farm fencing.

“They’re great plodders,” he says. “Everything they do, they do it right. If they don’t know how to do something, they learn.” When they were fencing the Cass Peak reserve, “it was hard work for a young man,” says Mr Johnson. “They were taking posts down a 45-degree pitch. It took me all my time to keep up with them.” Cedric’s Track, completed before Mr Turner died, had been discussed some years ago when Mr Johnson was in charge of the Sign of the Kiwi. He had wanted some way to let trampers go round Sugar Loaf without having to use the Summit Road.

“They were keen trampers, they said sure, we’ll follow the cattle line,” he says. Cattle were great engineers, and would follow the easiest route. Their human followers laid out a small track, figured out where the bridges should be, and left the heavy track formation work to a Project Employment Programmer-team. The Port Hills work party finished off the track, sowing it in grass and doing some signs and marker posts. Mr Holdsworth sees potential for even more tracks, particularly down in the thick bush along an old quarry road below the slope they have been weeding.

“You meet your cobbers and get a good view,” he says of the work, which is done on most Tuesdays of the year unless the weather packs up or too many are away on holiday. He says he has become used once again to a familiar view across the plain to the Southern Alps. When he returned from trekking in Nepal in 1969, the mountains in the distance “looked like they had been run over by a steamroller” after he had faced the high Himalayas for so long. He admits to getting on (“I’m just nearer 80 than 70 now, and you can work it out from that”), but not nearing the end of his work in the hills.

“Father Time will decide,” he says. “I can think of nothing better than dying up here. That would suit me fine, I think.”