The TECT All Terrain Park Discovery Day!

One of the major things I have been involved in was the TECT All Terrain Park Discovery Day. It was a day designed for the user groups (and contractors) to come up to the park and display and tell about what they propose to do in the park. It also was a Western Bay of Plenty District Council & Sport Bay of Plenty Live To Play co-event designed to encourage families to get outside and be active.

The biggest job was to contact all the user groups and this was somewhat difficult. I might have said it before but Ric said: "It's like herding cats!" Which is SO true! Just trying to get a hold of them is quite challenging but I did and we had 9 groups upthere on the day. They brought cars, dogs, horses, SAR-equipment (SAR = Search And Rescue) and motorcycles. 15 contractors showed off some of their pretty awesome machinery. Among others a machine that can turn a large tree into chips within 90 seconds! Fuuun....!

Two very mellow sleddogs...

Native plants going in the ground...

One word: Wow...!

The scouts built a ropebridge...



The kids loved the horses!!



I admire guys daring to do this...

1 minute it's a tree, the next a bunch of chips...!



A cool little portable mill. 2 chainsaws and one blade...

We had 4 choppers there! How cool is that?! 4!!! The TECT Rescue, the M*A*S*H, and two other showing how to use a monsoon bucket and one giving an air show. I really wanted to go on the M*A*S*H chopper but time flew by so fast and all of the sudden it was 3 pm and time to go home. Well, after cleaning up that is...

The TECT Rescue Helicopter



Filling the monsoon bucket...



And now putting out the fire with the monsoon bucket...



Man! This guy can really fly!

I also arranged a scavenger hunt for the kids. They had to find different things around the hub site and they did an awesome job! We have a problem with a plant called crocosmia and they had to pick 5 plants out the ground and also collect pine cones. Other plants they needed to draw a picture of because the plants were native. We want those to stay in the ground...! I had also posted 8 signs with English, Maori and Danish words on them. For example: Horse - Hoiho - Hest. They all got a prize for their effort and it was fun doing something for the kids.

A lolly scramble from the chopper...

We had hoped to see 300 people up there.We would have been happy with that number. Conservatively we guesstimate that 600 turned up to see what it's was all about....!! It was an amazing day!

Now we face the summer and things are starting to happen at the Park. Trails are going to be built and hopefully by the end of summer we are going to have an official opening of parts of the Park. Should be very exciting...!

I got a little ride on Fox. He was amazing!