A working bee was organised for the bach occupiers belonging to the Islington Bay Weedbusters exactly a year from the day on the 25th October 2008 when the inaugural meeting was held on Rangitoto at Islington Bay to form the Weedbusters community group. A similar group had been founded by the Rangitoto Wharf bach occupiers earlier in the year on the 5th January.

This year the weather really did excel itself for Labour Weekend. Saturday was one of those glorious spring days with ample sunshine and warmth to entice folk out to shrug off those winter blues and welcome in the season of relaxation and fun at the bach.

Help not only came from bach occupiers but from outside as we had advertised the event with the Auckland Botanical Society (ABS) and the ARC. So we had an ABS member and staff from Auckland Zoo totalling 16 on the Saturday and 20 on the Sunday. It was tremendously wonderful turnout for a Labour Weekend.

Annually the Department of Conservation spend in the region of $140,000.00 on Rangitoto weed control. There are 354 exotic weed species recorded from the island. Fortunately only 70 of which are classed as environmental weeds and these are the ones that are being annually targeted.

This weekend I decided to focus our weeding efforts on one particular succulent weed species, namely fairy crassula or sometimes known as pitted crassula – Crassula multicava - an early introduction from South Africa. To date this species hasn’t received much attention from our weed control team.

The main task was to physically remove this succulent from the lava rocks where it is preventing any natural re-generation of those super silvery sword-shaped astelias.

We decided to leave and spray at some later date where mats of the crassula were covering several square metres and just clear where it was growing around the natives and all other smaller infestations.

The two groups working from 10-12.30 on both days filled forty-three 56L sacks full with the succulent weed. The sacks were then emptied into 2 very large black, composting sacks where the composting process will quickly destroy this invader and reduce it to mush.

A lot of fun was had by all over the 2 days and it was great to see so much interest and enthusiasm from the 2 groups and their determination to rid the areas around the baches of weeds.

Lunches were provided by courtesy of Weedbusters

A similar event but focussing on a different exotic weed will be planned for 2010.

Many thanks to all of you that participated and helped me organise these 2 events.