Connor, Lachlan and Ian Weeding at Riverlands, December 2013
The three of us spent 3 days working hard to dig out pampas and bowl one of the worst gorse patches at Riverlands.
After two days we were all quite scratched and battered but the boys continued to battle on, refining their technique to avoid getting further scratched.
We focused on eliminating pampas from the bush margin around the macadamia area by digging them out with spades. Pampas in the middle grassy area was left to be sprayed with much already poisoned and just needing a follow-up spray.
As a break from the hard physical pampas work we partially cleared the track down to the fishing hole. More than half of this was turned into a beautiful wide vehicle track.
Under the pampas we found many giant centipedes, peripatus and big spiders. Two fat looking peripatus squirted their prey disabling slime while held in Lachlan's hand. I said "don't point that at me!" fearful of getting peripatus slime in my eye.
During a break from weeding, we did some measurement of the larger kauri trees surrounding the macadamia patch. The biggest kauri we found was 204 cm in circumference (at chest, 1.4 m height). A nearby totara was about 220 cm in circumference.
