The Friends new End to End Maintenance program commenced on the Mother’s Day weekend with a two day camp based at Cape Jervis.  Twelve volunteers plus the section leader Albert Schmidke and his colleague, Richard Triggs worked on the Trail between Cape Jervis and Tapanappa in Deep Creek Conservation Park.

The weather was perfect for maintenance work although the chill breeze later in the afternoon was piercing.  As a result we had two full days of hard work maintaining the trail.  There was plenty of pruning, plating and posting – large amounts of undergrowth needed to be cut back, many old plates had faded and needed to be replaced and several new marker posts were erected to help walkers on their way.

As a result, the first two sections on the trail are in good order and ready for the onslaught from End to End 12 this coming weekend.

Working through two End to End sections in the one weekend proved to be a considerable challenge.  While the team coped very well and the majority of the planned maintenance work was completed, some sections were a little light on as far as pruning is concerned.

The team celebrated on the Saturday night with a very pleasant dinner in the Cape Jervis Tavern.  Seven local guests attended the dinner in an effort to build relationships with local communities.  Their responses were very positive which suggests that this initiative may assist us to enhance the reputation of the Trail and generate positive local interest.

Overall the feedback from all of the volunteers and our dinner guests has been very positive. We have received several constructive suggestions about how we can improve arrangements for our maintenance next camp to be held on June 17 and 18..

For that trip we will be moving along the trail from Tapanappa to Waitpinga. If you are interested in joining the maintenance group for that weekend, you can check the details and register via the Walk Calendar on our website.

For more information on the End to End Maintenance can be found in this bulletin