This year, one of our “epic” recreation trips was scaling the 2 big volcanoes in the central volcanic plateau area.

HERE is one volunteer’s photo blog!

In August 2008 we signed a Sale & Purchase agreement on Earthwise Valley, which was conditional on obtaining Council permission to subdivide. After 18 frustrating months this bureacratic process has concluded and a Resource Consent to subdivide has been granted!

This means our purchase of the land is now unconditional, and we will continue to lease the property until the sale completes (after surveying and title issues). While the outcome is overall a good one, and certainly a victory for common-sense, the costs for our charity have been much higher than necessary. Money that could have been spent on direct action (purchasing trees for example) has been spent on unnecessary, ‘expert’ reports – like a Landscape Assessment which recommends we plant trees!

However, the future is secured for physical works and long-term ecological restoration of the Valley.

Nowadays it seems everyone is traveling with a laptop.. and many volunteers are keeping a blog and/or uploading photo collections.

Several of our current volunteers are doing this and we’ve created a colelctive site linking to their stories:     http://earthwisevalley.blogspot.com/

this includes YouTube videos and photo collections…    Thank you Dave, Nicole, John, Laura and Bexie!