This week was run with the great assistance by Ian Sinclair and John Pemble organising the group and activities; with Jane Gye and Nancy Pallin supervising weeding duties. Ian Hutton had a medical issue and was absent for 5 days.

The group arrived a day late, as bad weather had delayed the flight, however all arrived by Monday morning. The first excursion was to transit hill to do some maintenance on the Colin Lambert Banyan tree and commemorative plaque site. “A sunny, windy day we headed up Transit Hill to pay tribute to Colin Lambert’s banyan tree and we weeded around the area. The tree has doubled in size over twelve months; and we were treated by Veronica Lambert with champagne and lemon hazelnut cake.”

Late in the day an ominous weather forecast came for large storms with damaging winds. And this did happen at 2am Tuesday morning; “a very early start for most of us with a violent storm at 2 am with 147km/hr wind gusts and pouring rain. I seriously lay in bed wondering what to do if the roof came off and the windows were blown in. There was a continuous lightning show for 20 minutes.

Eventually things calmed a little and sleep resumed.” The wind was still very strong in the morning, and group cautiously proceeded to the weeding site above Middle Beach. This was continuing on from last year, removing Palm grass, Cape gooseberry, and freeing up native saplings from vines so they could grow and recover the forest quicker. This was the main site for weeding activities for the week. However, on one afternoon the group visited Edie’s Glen to do follow up maintenance on the small weeds such as fleabane, thistle, Cape gooseberry and bidens. Everyone very impressed how this has recovered from a forest of Rice paper plant and Castor oil plant.